Title
Does Women's Empowerment Reduce Prevalence of Stunted and Underweight Children in Rural India?
Abstract
This study investigates whether mother's empowerment as measured by her bargaining power relative to father's affects children's nutritional status using the three rounds of NFHS data in India. First, the relative educational attainment of mothers significantly contributes to z scores pertaining to the short-term measures of nutritional status of children. Besides, the quantile regression results show strong associations between women's bargaining power and better nutritional status of children in terms of the long-term measure of nutrition at the low end of its conditional distribution. Finally, we find the relation between access to health schemes and better nutritional measures of children.
Keywords
Child Nutrition, Malnutrition, Empowerment, Bargaining, NFHS, NCAER, Quantile Regressions, Pseudo Panel, India
JEL Classification
C21, C23, C26, I14
Inquiries
School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UK
and
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059
Samuel Kobina ANNIM
Department of Economics, University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Veena S. KULKARNI
Department of Criminology, Sociology & Geography, Arkansas State University, USA
Raghav GAIHA
Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, India