Gender Gaps in Child Nutritional Status in Punjab, Pakistan

Theresa Chaudhry, Maha Khan and Azka Sarosh Mir
Additional contact information
Maha Khan: Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, UK.
Azka Sarosh Mir: Center for Research in Economics and Business, Lahore School of Economics, Lahore

The Pakistan Development Review, 2020, vol. 59, issue 2, 275-300

Abstract: Child nutritional status has improved over the period 2008 to 2014 in Punjab, Pakistan's largest province with a population of over 100 million, as rates of severe stunting have declined by 8.6 percentage points and average height-for-age (HFA) has increased by 0.19 standard deviations. However, the nutritional status of children in Punjab is still quite poor in comparison to many Sub-Saharan African countries. Recent research from India suggests eldest son preference and son-biased fertility stopping patterns negatively impacts the nutritional status of other children in the household, especially daughters. In order to test for latent gender discrimination in Punjab, Pakistan, a culturally similar neighbour, we apply a finite mixture model to a sample of couples with at least one child of each gender, though we do not find any. We do find, however, that when there is a larger share of children without an elder brother, that is, there is no son or a son is born after several daughters, that the incidence of stunting is higher and average HFA z-score of a couple’s children is lower, using an OLS analysis. This suggests that some families might be increasing their fertility beyond the number of children they can support in pursuit of sons. In this way, couples’ preferences regarding the gender composition of their children can have subsequent effects on the longterm nutritional status of their children.

Keywords: Pakistan; Height-for-Age; Gender; Finite Mixture Model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I15 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://pide.org.pk/pdfpdr/2020/275-300.pdf (application/pdf)

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:pid:journl:v:59:y:2020:i:2:p:275-300

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Pakistan Development Review from Pakistan Institute of Development Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Khurram Iqbal ().