Child Malnutrition in Rural India: Does Women’s Empowerment Reduce Prevalence of Stunted and Underweight Children?

This study using nationally representative multiple data sources spanning the period between 1992-2006 investigates whether mother’s empowerment affects children’s nutritional status as measured by z scores on ‘weight for height’, ‘weight for age’ and ‘height for age’. Findings indicate differences in nutritional status by child’s gender, region, caste. Further, multivariate analyses show that relative bargaining index defined as the share of mother’s schooling years over father’s schooling years positively and significantly influence the short term measures of nutritional status of children, namely, z scores of ‘weight- for- age’ and ‘weight- for- height’. However, the estimates of quantile regression suggest that the bargaining power will improve the chronic measure of nutritional status, namely, ‘height for age’ at only the low end of conditional distribution of z score. Additionally, access to health insurance programs and improvement in infrastructure and environment emerge as important factors in reducing child malnutrition.