SHORT ABSTRACT Understanding the links between womens employment and - PDF document

SHORT ABSTRACT Understanding the links between women’s employment and nutritional status in rapidly developing economies: the cases of Brazil and India Stephanie Bispo, Amos Channon, University of Southampton Maternal work changes household dynamics, what can affect child nutrition, particularly in places with high rates of stunting. The association between maternal work and child nutrition has not been well understood in the context of emerging countries, where opportunities for women to work in different sectors are growing rapidly. This study aimed to explore changes in female labour force participation in Brazil and India, and to investigate how such changes affect child stunting. Two waves of the Demographic and Health Survey were used for Brazil and India. Models were performed based on hypotheses regarding the trade-off between earnings from work and lack of time for childcare. Models for India were stratified by rural/urban areas, and family structure, since the first affect the types of work offered for women, and the second affects availability for childcare. Random-intercept models showed that in Brazil, most combinations of work led to positive effects for child growth, while in India, maternal work was overall associated to higher likelihood of having a stunting child. When maternal work was interacted with education and higher status, the positive effect of maternal work was also observed in India. The differences in findings between both countries occurred mainly because of the stage of country ’ s development, and the conditions of work offered for women. Findings suggest that improving maternal education, and policies protecting the working mother can affect child nutrition positively.

INTRODUCTION Malnutrition affects many children in low and middle income countries, with highlights on its prevalence in India and sub-Sahara Africa. It is estimated that at least 165 million children are stunted worldwide, from which 69 million live in south-central Asia, and 51 million live in Sub Sahara Africa (Black et al., 2013). Solid evidence shows that children from different areas and ethnic backgrounds can experience normal and similar patterns of weight and height when raised under appropriate conditions (de Onis et al., 2007). Therefore, high rates of stunting are unacceptable, especially when it refers to countries experiencing accentuated economic growth. Economic growth can lead to direct investments on nutrition, what is an opportunity for improving rates of malnutrition, economic inequality and poverty. It also can affect child nutrition indirectly through improving opportunities of work for women. There is an ongoing concern in the literature about how female labour force participation (FLFP) affects child health and nutrition, based on the important role of women in performing household tasks and as the main child caregiver (Anderson et al., 2003, Brown et al., 2010, Lamontagne et al., 1998). The association between maternal work and child nutrition has been extensively studied in low income countries during the eighties and nineties (Abbi et al., 1991, Desai and Jain, 1994, Engle, 1991). The research was driven by the concern regarding social and economic roles of women in times of economic recession and high rates of child mortality. Results from various studies from this time came with some limitations, where in most cases, analyses were not controlled by covariates, no characteristics of maternal work were investigated, and no consistent findings or mechanisms of how work impacts on child nutrition were provided (Leslie, 1988). Many studies discussed that in low income countries maternal work was positively associated with child nutritional outcomes due to payments in cash or kind, suggesting that the more the mother earned, the better the nutritional status of the child (Engle, 1993, Lamontagne et al., 1998, Leslie, 1988). Indeed, in situations of poverty, maternal work is a chance to contribute to household income and increase household expenditure, as demonstrated in many developing countries, such as the Dominic Republic, Guatemala and the Philippines (Johnson and Rogers, 1988, Popkin and Solon, 1976, Engle and Pedersen, 1989). Other studies did not find this association, suggesting that the income benefit did not counter the deleterious effects of the limited time available for child care and breastfeeding (Toyama et al., 2001, Ukwuani and Suchindran, 2003, Abbi et al., 1991). The main argument was that feeding and taking care of the child is very time consuming and nutritional

deficiencies or morbidity during childhood can have enormous effect on the child, especially in the context of poverty (Lamontagne et al., 1998, Glick and Sahn, 1998, Popkin and Solon, 1976). The complexity of this association is evidenced when considering work and household dynamics, both influenced by the context where the woman lives in. While women’s work for earnings is a dynamic process that can change according to demands, non-paid work can occupy as much time of mothers without being adequately captured by data as “work” (Engle, 1989; Desai & Jain, 1994). This generates a constraint in time available for child care, not necessarily bringing benefits for child health and nutrition. Furthermore, having a good quality substitute caregiver, or having other adults in the household to share the responsibility for childcare can attenuate negative effects of the absence of the mother due to working duties (Tucker, 1989, Lamontagne et al., 1998). While changes in FLFP and women’s role occurred slowly in developed countries, this experience in emerging countries 1 have been much quicker in the midst of poverty and high rates of child malnutrition. The concern with child nutrition in these countries highlights the importance of understanding the nature of work offered to women during economic growth and whether it worsens or improves child outcomes. Both topics, female work and child nutrition, are considered key priorities in international development, and have been included in the sustainable development goals, targeting to improve nutrition, to achieve gender equality, to empower girls and women, and free women from unpaid work (Hawkes and Popkin, 2015). Moreover, it is at the most interest of emerging countries to have continuous economic growth, what is proportionated by FLFP and improved nutrition. This paper explores maternal work and child nutrition in Brazil and India, two countries with very different backgrounds that have experienced accelerated economic growth since the end of 1990s (O'Neill, 2001), aiming to investigate how maternal work affects child height-for-age before and during economic growth, and how the nature of work can influence this association. Theoretical Framework The theoretical framework used in this study follows two main bodies of the literature, the first focusing on the economics of household decision making, and the other accessing women’s labour 1 “Emerging countries” is a term used to describe countries based in six criteria: economic growth rate; economic liberalization (market-oriented systems); export growth rate; financial market development; level and velocity of IT development; and political influence. These countries are very heterogeneous, and despite of economic development, they are often facing different levels of inequalities in income distribution, education and health (see OECD, 2011).

force participation and child-care decisions 2 . Those theories served as ground for understanding how maternal work affects child nutrition, and hypothesis were raised in the attempt of evaluating associations for different characteristics of maternal work. Since Becker (1965), a child has been presented as a consumer durable in the family, and a time- intensive consumer that can affect FLFP. Assuming that the woman is a mother of a child younger than five years old, a standard utility-maximizing framework models her time as: 𝑉 = 𝑉(𝑌, 𝑅, 𝑀), Where 𝑌 represents a composite market good, 𝑀 is the mother’s leisure and 𝐷 is child care. Both, child care and maternal work are seen as antagonists, as they create opposite time and income constraints. Time constraints are imposed when the mother allocates her time between hours worked in the market (𝐼) , leisure, and child care, while the child’s time is divided between maternal (𝐷𝑛) and non-maternal care (𝐷𝑜). 𝐼 + 𝐷𝑛 + 𝑀 = 1 𝐷𝑛 + 𝐷𝑜 = 1 The income constraint comes from the fact that maternal earnings from work (𝐹) , which adds income to the household (𝑍) can also be spent on non-maternal care, or in other needs of the child (N). 𝑂 + 𝐷𝑜 = 𝐹𝐼 + 𝑍 Child nutrition status (𝐷𝑂𝑇) at time 𝑢 can be written as a function of the income inputs invested in the child ’s health (𝐽) , time inputs invested in the child (𝐷) , and a set of exogenous variables that directly and indirectly affect child nutrition, such as biological and environmental characteristics (𝑎) , 𝐷𝑂𝑇 = 𝐺(𝐽 𝑗𝑢 , 𝐷 𝑗𝑢 , 𝑎 𝑗𝑢 ) Since maternal work can affect all parts of this function, the positive effect of work on child nutrition can be seen when the work function encounters a positive or balanced trade-off between the maternal time and income. 𝑋 ∗> 0 𝑗𝑔 (𝐹𝐼 + 𝑍) + (𝐷𝑛 + 𝐷𝑜) > 0 2 See Connelly (1992), and Becker (1965).