Impact of maternal employment on children malnutrition status in Bangladesh: an empirical analysis

About 40%, 15%, and 38% of children in Bangladesh are stunted, wasted, and underweight, respectively. This paper explores the causal relationship between maternal employment and under-five children malnutrition in Bangladesh by using the instrumental variable approach utilizing the augmented cross-sectional samples of 25,667 and 1665 ever-married women at the national level and in metropolitan cities, respectively. This study finds a higher likelihood of stunting children of employed mothers at the national level, at 11.7%. The probabilities of stunting, wasting, and underweight children of employed mothers are also very high in metropolitan cities at 15.8%, 2.9%, and 11.6%, respectively. These impacts on the children of formal-working mothers are comparable to those of both formal and informal-working mothers, almost double at the national level and in metropolitan cities. The likelihood of stunting children of formal-working mothers at the national level is 20.2% and the probabilities of stunting, wasting, and underweight children of formal-working mothers in metropolitan cities are 28.3%, 5.3%, and 20.9%, respectively. This study is a good reference for the policymakers of Bangladesh; with it, they can adopt effective measures to curb early childhood malnutrition.