Women empowerment, nutritional status of children and household food security in Ghana

Abstract

This thesis investigates whether women’s empowerment, measured by education attainment relative to her partner, decision-making and acceptance of domestic violence, is related to nutritional status of children and household food security in Ghana. Using data from 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, Ghana Living Standard Survey, 2017 and Feed the Future 2012 and 2015, the study examines the effect of women empowerment on child’s nutritional status at different points in its conditional distributions using Quantile Regression estimation technique. Generalized Ordered Logit and margins are used to estimate the probability of a household being food secure as women empowerment increases, whereas Random Effect, Generalized Estimating Equations and Multivariate decomposition are used to examine the probability of female-headed households being food secure as women empowerment increases. The study observes that women’s empowerment is associated with improvement in the nutritional status of children with Z-scores less than -4 and -3 standard deviations, for acutely and severely malnourished childre, respectively. Variation in food insecurity between the gendered household types is as a result of differences in explained and unexplained characteristics. However, improvement in women empowerment, proxied by decision-making and relative education reduces food insecurity in female-headed households by 45 and 9 percent respectively. The study recommends that the Ministry for Gender and Social Protection should educate male partners on the need for women's participation in decision-making at the household level as well as increase availability of formal education to women.