IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/aaea01/20586.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact Of Household-Level Determinants Of Child Health And Nutrition: Cross-Country Evidence From West Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Penders, Christopher L.
  • Staatz, John M.

Abstract

Poor child health and nutrition persist throughout West Africa. This research analyzes the impact of key economic variables, including income, education and background characteristics, on child health and nutrition across nine different countries. The results are interpreted in the context of differing levels of economic development among these nations. The findings do not show wealth and parental education to be robust across the sample, but maternal background characteristics have a positive, statistically significant and highly consistent effect across all the countries. The importance of mothers' height does not simply represent a genetic influence, but can be interpreted to signify that women with a healthier upbringing, and hence taller, have healthier children, ceteris parabus. This finding is consistent with long run observations that increases in health (and height) coincide with economic development.

Suggested Citation

  • Penders, Christopher L. & Staatz, John M., 2001. "The Impact Of Household-Level Determinants Of Child Health And Nutrition: Cross-Country Evidence From West Africa," 2001 Annual meeting, August 5-8, Chicago, IL 20586, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea01:20586
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.20586
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/20586/files/sp01pe01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.20586?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lant Pritchett & Lawrence H. Summers, 1996. "Wealthier is Healthier," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 31(4), pages 841-868.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1, March.
    3. Thomas, Duncan & Lavy, Victor & Strauss, John, 1996. "Public policy and anthropometric outcomes in the Cote d'Ivoire," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 155-192, August.
    4. Pitt, Mark M & Rosenzweig, Mark R, 1985. "Health and Nutrient Consumption across and within Farm Households," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(2), pages 212-223, May.
    5. Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan, 1995. "Human resources: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 1883-2023, Elsevier.
    6. Thomas, Duncan & Strauss, John, 1992. "Prices, infrastructure, household characteristics and child height," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 301-331, October.
    7. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1, March.
    8. Gibson, John, 2001. "Literacy and Intrahousehold Externalities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 155-166, January.
    9. D. E. Sahn & D. C. Stifel, 2002. "Parental Preferences for Nutrition of Boys and Girls: Evidence from Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(1), pages 21-45.
    10. Fogel, Robert W, 1994. "Economic Growth, Population Theory, and Physiology: The Bearing of Long-Term Processes on the Making of Economic Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 369-395, June.
    11. Thomas, Duncan & Strauss, John & Henriques, Maria-Helena, 1990. "Child survival, height for age and household characteristics in Brazil," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 197-234, October.
    12. Behrman, Jere R. & Deolalikar, Anil B., 1988. "Health and nutrition," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 14, pages 631-711, Elsevier.
    13. Strauss, John, 1990. "Households, Communities, and Preschool Children's Nutrition Outcomes: Evidence from Rural Cote d'Ivoire," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(2), pages 231-261, January.
    14. Smith, Lisa C. & Haddad, Lawrence James, 2000. "Overcoming child malnutrition in developing countries: past achievements and future choices," 2020 vision discussion papers 30, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mburu, John G. & Okello, Julius Juma, 2008. "The Prevalence of Under-Nourished Child Obese Mother Phenomenon in Rural Areas: Evidence from Central Province of Kenya," 2007 Second International Conference, August 20-22, 2007, Accra, Ghana 52160, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    2. Amy Ickowitz, 2012. "Wealthiest Is Not Always Healthiest: What Explains Differences in Child Mortality in West Africa?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(2), pages 192-227, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas, Duncan & Lavy, Victor & Strauss, John, 1996. "Public policy and anthropometric outcomes in the Cote d'Ivoire," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 155-192, August.
    2. Aslam, Monazza & Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, 2012. "Parental Education and Child Health—Understanding the Pathways of Impact in Pakistan," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2014-2032.
    3. Millimet, Daniel & Wang, Le, 2005. "Is the Quantity-Quality Trade-off Really a Trade-off for All?," Departmental Working Papers 0502, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    4. Subha Mani, 2012. "Is there Complete, Partial, or No Recovery from Childhood Malnutrition? – Empirical Evidence from Indonesia," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 74(5), pages 691-715, October.
    5. Hoddinott, John, 1997. "Water, health, and income," FCND discussion papers 25, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    6. Indunil De Silva & Sudarno Sumarto, 2018. "Child Malnutrition in Indonesia: Can Education, Sanitation and Healthcare Augment the Role of Income?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(5), pages 837-864, July.
    7. Gustav Ranis & Frances Stewart, 2000. "Strategies for Success in Human Development," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 49-69.
    8. Liu, Haoming, 2008. "The impact of women's power on child quality in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 101-115, March.
    9. Subha Mani, 2014. "Socioeconomic Determinants of Child Health: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 28(1), pages 81-104, March.
    10. Gustav Ranis, 2000. "Strategies for Success in Human Development," Working Papers 808, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    11. Lindelow, Magnus, 2004. "Health care decisions as a family matter - intra-household education externalities and the utilization of health services," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3324, The World Bank.
    12. Amrita Ghatak, 2010. "Health, Labour Supply and Wages: A Critical Review of Literature," Working Papers 244, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    13. Kimhi, Ayal, 2003. "Socio-economic determinants of health and physical fitness in southern Ethiopia," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 55-75, January.
    14. O'Donnell, Owen & Nicolás, Ángel López & Van Doorslaer, Eddy, 2009. "Growing richer and taller: Explaining change in the distribution of child nutritional status during Vietnam's economic boom," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 45-58, January.
    15. Anoshua Chaudhuri, 2005. "Direct and Indirect Effects of a Maternal and Child Health Program in Rural Bangladesh," Journal of Developing Societies, , vol. 21(1-2), pages 143-173, June.
    16. Vani K. Borooah, 2002. "The Role of Maternal Literacy in Reducing the Risk of Child Malnutrition in India," ICER Working Papers 31-2002, ICER - International Centre for Economic Research.
    17. Marini, Alessandra & Gragnolati, Michele, 2003. "Malnutrition and poverty in Guatemala," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2967, The World Bank.
    18. Alejandro Ramirez & Gustav Ranis, 1997. "Economic Growth and Human Development," Working Papers 787, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    19. Borooah, Vani, 2009. "Maternal Literacy and Child Malnutrition in India," MPRA Paper 19833, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Tilman Bruck, "undated". "Determinants of Rural Poverty in Post-War Mozambique: Evidence from a Household Survey and Implications for Government and Donor Policy," QEH Working Papers qehwps67, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aaea01:20586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaeaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.