http://motherchildnutrition.org/pdf/Reducing-child-undernutrition-Past-drivers-and-priorities-for-the-post-MDG-era.pdf

Reducing Child Undernutrition: Past Drivers and Priorities for the Post-MDG Era

What dimensions of women’s empowerment in agriculture matter for nutrition in Ghana?

Women's disempowerment is hypothesised to contribute to high rates of undernutrition among South Asian children. However, evidence for this relationship has not been systematically reviewed. This review of empirical studies aims to: (1) synthesise the evidence linking women's empowerment and child nutritional status in South Asia and (2) suggest directions for future research. We systematically searched Global Health, Embase (classic and Ovid), MEDLINE, Campbell Collaboration, Popline, Eldis, Web of Science, EconLit and Scopus. We generated 1661 studies for abstract and title screening. We full-text screened 44 of these, plus 10 additional studies the authors were aware of. Only 12 studies fulfilled our inclusion criteria. We included English materials published between 1990 and 2012 that examined the relationship(s) of at least one women's empowerment domain and nutritional status among South Asian children. Data were extracted and synthesised within three domains of empowerment: control of resources and autonomy, workload and time, and social support. The results showed women's empowerment to be generally associated with child anthropometry, but the findings are mixed. Inter-study differences in population characteristics, settings or methods/conceptualisations of women's empowerment, and the specific domains studied, likely contributed to these inconsistencies. This review also highlights that different women's empowerment domains may relate differently to child nutritional status. Future research should aim to harmonise definitions of women's empowerment, which key domains it should include, and how it is measured. Rigorous evaluation work is also needed to establish which policies and programmes facilitate women's empowerment and in turn, foster child nutritional well-being.

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Women's empowerment and child nutritional status in South Asia: a synthesis of the literature.

Many development programs that aim to alleviate poverty and improve investments in human capital consider women’s empowerment a key pathway by which to achieve impact and often target women as their main beneficiaries. Despite this, women’s empowerment dimensions are often not rigorously measured and are at times merely assumed. This paper starts by reflecting on the concept and measurement of women’s empowerment and then reviews some of the structural interventions that aim to influence underlying gender norms in society and eradicate gender discrimination. It then proceeds to review the evidence of the impact of three types of interventions — cash transfer programs, agricultural interventions, and microfinance programs — on women’s empowerment, nutrition, or both.Qualitative evidence on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs generally points to positive impacts on women’s empowerment, although quantitative research findings are more heterogenous. CCT programs produce mixed results on long-term nutritional status, and very limited evidence exists of their impacts on micronutrient status. The little evidence available on unconditional cash transfers (UCT) indicates mixed impacts on women’s empowerment and positive impacts on nutrition; however, recent reviews comparing CCT and UCT programs have found little difference in terms of their effects on stunting and they have found that conditionality is less important than other factors, such as access to healthcare and child age and sex. Evidence of cash transfer program impacts depending on the gender of the transfer recipient or on the conditionality is also mixed, although CCTs with non-health conditionalities seem to have negative impacts on nutritional status. The impacts of programs based on the gender of the transfer recipient show mixed results, but almost no experimental evidence exists of testing gender-differentiated impacts of a single program.

Women’s empowerment and nutrition: An evidence review

Husband and Wife Perspectives on Farm Household Decision-making Authority and Evidence on Intra-household Accord in Rural Tanzania.

What Dimensions of Women’s Empowerment Matter Most for Child Nutrition? Evidence Using Nationally Representative Data from Bangladesh

This paper examines the relationship between gender inequality and nutrition using direct indicators of empowerment such as mobility, decision-making power, and attitudes towards verbal and physical abuse. Our approach draws on the theory of the household as a utility maximizing unit that uses women’s status and characteristics as inputs to produce a final good, child health. Indices that capture distinct dimensions of women’s empowerment are used as explanatory variables along with controls for age and sex of the child, maternal height and education. Results from Logit models indicate that a greater degree of women’s empowerment is associated with better long term nutritional status of children. Attitudes towards domestic violence have a significant effect on chronic malnutrition and mobility; participation in decision making and ability to purchase food are important influences on dietary diversity. Our findings warrant further research and attention to inform the design and implementation of interventions. Specific research questions that emerge from these analyses relate to types of individual and community interventions that can reduce prevalence of violence and empower women in order to achieve better health and wellbeing outcomes; and policy actions, including legal instruments that can empower women and address the links between empowerment and nutrition.

Unpacking the Links Between Women's Empowerment and Child Nutrition Evidence Using Nationally Representative Data From Bangladesh

Heterogeneous effects of imperfectly enforced minimum wages in low-wage labor markets

Country-level census data are typically collected once every 10 years. However, conflicts, migration, urbanization, and natural disasters can rapidly shift local population patterns. This study demonstrates the feasibility of a "bottom-up"-method to estimate local population density in the between-census years by combining household surveys with contemporaneous geo-spatial data, including village-area and satellite imagery-based indicators. We apply this technique to the case of Sri Lanka using Poisson regression models based on variables selected using the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO). The model is estimated in villages sampled in the 2012/13 Household Income and Expenditure Survey, and is employed to obtain out-of-sample density estimates in the non-surveyed villages. These estimates approximate the census density accurately and are more precise than other bottom-up studies using similar geo-spatial data. While most open-source population products redistribute census population "top-down" from higher to lower spatial units using areal interpolation and dasymetric mapping techniques, these products become less accurate as the census itself ages. Our method circumvents the problem of the aging census by relying instead on more up-to-date household surveys. The collective evidence suggests that our method is cost effective in tracking local population density with greater frequency in the between-census years.

/pdf/estimating-small-area-population-density-in-sri-lanka-using-1lgi1pz8cx.pdf

Estimating small-area population density in Sri Lanka using surveys and Geo-spatial data.

Country-level census data are typically collected once every 10 years. However, conflict, migration, urbanization, and natural disasters can cause rapid shifts in local population patters. This study uses Sri Lankan data to demonstrate the feasibility of a bottom-up method that combines household survey data with contemporaneous satellite imagery to track frequent changes in local population density. A Poisson regression model based on indicators derived from satellite data, selected using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, accurately predicts village-level population density. The model is estimated in villages sampled in the 2012/13 Household Income and Expenditure Survey to obtain out-of-sample density predictions in the non-surveyed villages. The predictions approximate the 2012 census density well are more accurate that the other bottom-up studies based on lower-resolution satellite data. The predictions are also more accurate than most publicly available population products, which rely on areal interpolation of census data to redistribute population at the local level. The accuracies are similar when estimated using a random forest model, and when density estimates are expressed in terms of population counts. The collective evidence suggests that combining surveys with satellite data is a cost-effective method to track local population changes at more frequent intervals.

Vidhya Soundararajan

Papers

What Dimensions of Women’s Empowerment Matter Most for Child Nutrition? Evidence Using Nationally Representative Data from Bangladesh

Unpacking the Links Between Women's Empowerment and Child Nutrition Evidence Using Nationally Representative Data From Bangladesh

Heterogeneous effects of imperfectly enforced minimum wages in low-wage labor markets

Estimating small-area population density in Sri Lanka using surveys and Geo-spatial data.

Estimating Small Area Population Density Using Survey Data and Satellite Imagery : An Application to Sri Lanka