Childhood Health and Mother Empowerment in Rural Myanmar

JARQ : Japan Agricultural Research Quarterly
ISSN 00213551
書誌レコードID(総合目録DB) AA0068709X
本文フルテキスト

Child health is often a weak link in developing countries, and Myanmar is a case in point. Broadly speaking, a mother’s education has been shown in the literature to be an important factor in the determination of child health. But the empowerment of women over the allocation of intrahousehold resources has also been shown to be an important child health factor, and thus an accumulation of human capital. In the present study, we use survey data on an important anthropometric indicator of child health and its associated household characteristics to specify and estimate a child-health production function in rural Myanmar. We then use this production function to draw implications for the height-for-age growth curves. Importantly, our questionnaire-based indicator of empowerment shows the mother’s influence over household decisions regarding income, expenditures, and education to be an important factor in the Z-score of the height-for-age indicative of a child’s long-term nutritional status. Nearly 30% of girls and 48% of boys are found in a condition of being stunted nutritionally, and the growth curves come closer to the WHO standard as the empowerment of women improves. Although a number of women rights were achieved early in Myanmar, greater empowerment in the home remains a key to improve child welfare.

刊行年月日
作成者 Chisa NAKAMURA Yoko SAITO Thuzar SHWE
著者キーワード

bargaining power

child nutrition

health production function

height-for-age

human capital

公開者 Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences
受付日 2019-03-20
受理日 2019-08-08
オンライン掲載日
54
3
開始ページ 253
終了ページ 262
DOI 10.6090/jarq.54.253
言語 eng

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