BMJ Global Health Funding This paper was made possible with funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Grant Number: OPP1148933). Patient and public involvement statement Given this was an analysis of pre-­ existing data, we did not involve patients or the public in the design, conduct or reporting of the research. Patient consent for publication Not required. Ethics approval Institutions conducting each MICS or DHS survey were responsible for seeking ethical approval. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health IRB approved this study (Protocol No: IRB17-0868). All datasets used in this paper were deidentified. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. Data availability statement All data are publicly available from the DHS (https:// www.​dhsprogram.​com/) and MICS (http://​mics.​unicef.​org/) websites. The results of all analyses are presented in the supplementary tables. Open access This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://​creativecommons.​org/​ licenses/​by/​4.​0/. ORCID iDs Amiya Bhatia http://​orcid.​org/​0000-​0001-​8163-​2568 Nancy Krieger https://​orcid.​org/​0000-​0002-​4815-​5947 Aluisio J D Barros http://​orcid.​org/​0000-​0002-​2022-​8729 Cesar Victora http://​orcid.​org/​0000-​0002-​2465-​2180 References 1 United Nations. Sustainable development goals 2016, 2017. Available: https://​sust​aina​bled​evel​opment.​un.​org/​sdgs [Accessed 08 Feb 2017]. 2 UNICEF. Every child's birth right: inequities and trends in birth registration. New York: UNICEF, 2013. 3 World Bank, WHO. 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