How does women’s time in reproductive work and agriculture affect maternal and child nutrition? Evidence from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Mozambique, and Nepal

Hitomi Komatsu, Sophie Theis and Hazel Jean Malapit

No 1486, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: There are concerns that increasing women’s engagement in agriculture could have a negative effect on nutrition because it limits the time available for nutrition-improving reproductive work. However, very few empirical studies have been able to analyze whether these concerns are well-founded. This paper examines whether an increase in women’s time in agriculture adversely affects maternal and child nutrition, and whether the lack of women’s time in reproductive work leads to poorer nutrition. Using data from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ghana, Mozambique, and Nepal, we find that on the whole, in poor households, reductions in women’s reproductive work time are detrimental to nutrition, especially for children. In contrast, women’s and children’s nutrition in nonpoor households is less sensitive to reductions in time on reproductive work. Working long hours in agriculture reduces women’s dietary diversity score in Ghana and nonpoor women’s in Mozambique. However, for poor women and children in Mozambique, and children in Nepal, working in agriculture in fact increases dietary diversity. This suggests that agriculture as a source of food and income is particularly important for the poor. Our results illustrate that women’s time allocation and nutrition responses to agricultural interventions are likely to vary according to socioeconomic status and local context.

Keywords: gender; women's empowerment; agriculture; nutrition; children; poverty; time; time use patterns; women; Cambodia; Ghana; Bangladesh; Mozambique; Nepal; Southern Asia; Africa; Western Africa; Asia; Sub-saharan Africa; Southern Africa; South-eastern Asia; Eastern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/149529

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:1486

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().