Revisiting the socioeconomic determinants of exclusive breastfeeding practices: evidence from Eastern Indonesia

Maria Lo Bue and Jan Priebe

Oxford Development Studies, 2018, vol. 46, issue 3, 398-410

Abstract: This paper attempts to fill several important research gaps on the socioeconomic determinants of exclusive breastfeeding practices. In contrast to previous studies that have focused on the timely initiation and duration of breastfeeding, this article examines exclusive breastfeeding practices. Using data on 1138 children from the Indonesian Family Life Survey East 2012, we revisited to what extent mothers’ education levels and work in non-traditional sectors influence exclusive breastfeeding patterns. Furthermore, we investigated to what extent health-care demand and supply factors influence exclusive breastfeeding practices. Controlling for a wide range of individual, household, and community characteristics, our findings suggest that exclusive breastfeeding practices are affected positively by mothers’ education and negatively by mothers’ labour market participation in non-traditional employment contracts. Moreover, our results indicate that a higher availability and quality of health-care supply does not necessarily lead to better exclusive breastfeeding practices. Only when health-care supply was matched with a significant demand for such services, did we observe a higher chance for optimal exclusive breastfeeding.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13600818.2017.1397620 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:oxdevs:v:46:y:2018:i:3:p:398-410

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CODS20

DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2017.1397620

Access Statistics for this article

Oxford Development Studies is currently edited by Jo Boyce and Frances Stewart

More articles in Oxford Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().