Does Maternal Employment Affect Child Nutrition Status? New Evidence from Egypt

Ahmed Rashad and Mesbah Sharaf

No 2017-7, Working Papers from University of Alberta, Department of Economics

Abstract: Despite that maternal employment can increase family income; several studies suggest that it has adverse health consequences for children. The literature on the effects of maternal employment on children in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is sparse. In this study, we assess the impact of maternal employment on children’s health in Egypt, the most populous country in the MENA region. We use a nationally representative sample of 12,888 children under the age of five from 2014 Demographic and Health Survey for Egypt, to estimate the causal impact of mothers’ employment on their children’s nutritional status, as measured by the Height-for-Age Score (HAZ). We adopt various estimation methods and control for observed and unobserved household characteristics to identify the causal effect of maternal employment. These different techniques include Propensity Score Matching (PSM), and an Instrumental Variable Two Stage Least Squares approach. We find that maternal employment has a robust negative impact on child nutritional status in Egypt. However, the effect of maternal employment is understated when the Ordinary Least Squares and PSM are applied. More family-friendly policies for working moms are strongly needed in Egypt.

Keywords: Maternal Employment; Child Under-nutrition; Instrumental Variable; Egypt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2017-08-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does maternal employment affect child nutrition status? New evidence from Egypt (2019)
Working Paper: Does Maternal Employment Affect Child Nutrition Status? New Evidence From Egypt (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:albaec:2017_007

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