Child malnutrition in Nepal: Women’s empowerment or promotion of their socioeconomic status?

Elodie Rossi

Bordeaux Economics Working Papers from Bordeaux School of Economics (BSE)

Abstract: After unsuccessful poverty alleviation policies to tackle the "Asian enigma," women's empowerment (WE) is now promoted as another strategy. However, the concept is still debated between pioneers defending more power for women and international institutions promoting it through improvements in their socio-economic status (SES). This paper proposes to advance this way by examining the impact of WE in terms of power on children’s nutrition, also testing its interactive effects with the mothers’ SES. Using the 2016 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, we account for two measures of children’s nutrition: height-for-age and dietary diversity scores. We use the multidimensional exploratory analysis to construct composite measures of WE and SES and tackle endogeneity issues through an instrumental variable approach. Our results demonstrate that the impact of WE is underestimated if endogeneity is not considered with a more positive effect on the fight against child malnutrition than women’s SES promotion. Interactive effects between WE and SES also suggest that the positive impact of WE exists regardless of mothers’ SES, mitigating the adverse effect of low maternal SES on children’s nutrition. Besides, we highlight that if women’s SES is a determinant in rural areas, promoting women’s education is desirable, while women's participation in the labor market has mixed consequences on maternal and child health. Finally, promoting WE appears crucial in breaking gender inequalities in child malnutrition locally.

Keywords: Child undernutrition; Women's empowerment; Nepal; Socio-economic status; Multiple correspondence analysis; Instrumental variables. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:grt:bdxewp:2023-04

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