Women's Empowerment, Maternal Nutrition and Chronic Poverty: Further Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper analyses the link between women’s decision-making power and maternal nutritional status through which women’s “voice and agency” can indirectly influence child nutrition and thus future prospects for escaping chronic poverty. The literature on intergenerational poverty persistence recognises the role of parental conditions such as economic assets, educational human capital, and occupational choices. This paper highlights the importance of maternal nutrition as another potential channel for intergenerational persistence. The two key results of the paper stand out. First, women’s decision-making power (a measure of empowerment) is an important correlate of nutritional deprivations among currently married women, even after controlling for factors such as household asset- poverty, women’s education and work status, and partner’s characteristics. Second, while women’s decision-making power do not have direct influence on child nutrition, its effect on the latter percolate through the mother-child nutritional link. These results seem to have larger impact cutting across asset quintiles. The role of women’s decision-making power along with other women-empowering measures needs to be viewed as an integral component of anti-poverty measures.