Does Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Matter for Children’s Health Status? Insights from Northern Ghana

Yacob A. Zereyesus (), Vincent Amanor-Boadu, Kara L. Ross () and Aleksan Shanoyan ()
Additional contact information
Yacob A. Zereyesus: Kansas State University
Kara L. Ross: Kansas State University
Aleksan Shanoyan: Kansas State University

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2017, vol. 132, issue 3, No 17, 1265-1280

Abstract: Abstract Given that women in rural communities in developing countries are responsible for the nutrition and health-related decisions affecting children in their care, their empowerment may influence the health status of their children. The association between women’s empowerment, measured by using a recently developed Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index, and children’s health status is examined for a sample of households in Northern Ghana applying a Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) model. The MIMIC approach is used to link multiple indicator variables with multiple independent variables through a “single underlying” latent variable. Height-for-age and weight-for-height z-scores are used as indicators of the underlying children’s health status and women’s empowerment in agriculture and control variables are used as the multiple independent variables. Our results show that neither the composite empowerment score used to capture women’s empowerment in agriculture nor its decomposed components are statistically significant in their association with the latent children’s health status. However, the associations between children’s health status and control variables such as mother’s education, child’s age, household’s hunger scale and residence locale are statistically significant. Results also confirm the existence of the ‘single underlying’ common latent variable. Of the two health status indicators, height-for-age scores and weight-for- height scores, the former exhibited a relatively stronger association with the latent health status. While promoting women’s empowerment to enhance their ability to make strategic life choices, it is important to carefully consider how the achievement of these objectives will impact the women’s well-being and the well-being of the children in their care.

Keywords: Women’s empowerment in agriculture; Latent variable; Height-for-age; Weight-for-height; MIMIC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-016-1328-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:soinre:v:132:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1328-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1328-z

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().