Women's Empowerment and Child Malnutrition: The Case of Mozambique

Abstract

Using data from the 2011 Demographic and Health Survey in Mozambique this paper checks whether women empowerment has an impact on the nutritional status of children. We evaluate the degree of empowerment of women via multidimensional approaches, making a distinction between five domains: decision making, use of violence by husband/partner, attitude of the woman towards this use of violence, available information, material resources. Each domain includes several questions reflecting different aspects of empowerment. For each domain of empowerment, three different methods of aggregation are used: correspondence analysis, the so-called Alkire and Foster methodology and the ?fuzzy sets? approach. The impact of women empowerment on the nutritional status of children is analyzed via the MIMIC approach. No clear-cut conclusion concerning the possible impact of women?s empowerment on the nutritional status of children could be drawn. But, ceteris paribus, the material wealth of the...