Measuring maternal autonomy and its effect on child nutrition in rural India

Wiji Arulampalam, Anjor Bhaskar and Nisha Srivastava
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Anjor Bhaskar: Azim Premji University, Bangalore
Nisha Srivastava: nstitute for Human Development, Delhi

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: We examine the link between a mother’s autonomy - the freedom and ability to think, express, make decisions, and act, independently - and the nutritional status of her children. We design a novel statistical framework that accounts for the cultural and traditional environment to create a measure of maternal autonomy treating this as a latent characteristic that is fixed in the short term. Using data from India, we deal with two econometric challenges : (i) creation and measurement of the ‘autonomy’ index, and (ii) endogeneity caused by selection due to son preference. We find : (i) one standard deviation (SD) higher autonomy score is associated with a 0.16 SD higher Height-for-Age Z-scores (HAZ) ; and an (ii)10% lower prevalence of stunting (HAZ

Keywords: Child Nutrition; Latent Factor Models; Maternal Autonomy; Endogenous selection; Son preference JEL codes: I15; I14; C38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev and nep-hea
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Journal Article: Measuring maternal autonomy and its effect on child nutrition in rural India (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1455

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