November 8, 2017
Brauner-Otto, Sarah R., Sarah Baird, and Dirgha Ghimire. 2017” Women’s Labor Force Participation and Child Health in Nepal.”A paper presented at 2017 International Population Conference, Cape Town, South Africa (29 October -04 November 2017).
Presented At: Cape Town International Convention Centre -Roof terrace (Simultaneouse Interpretation) -Friday, 3 November 2017
The increase in women’s participation in the paid labor market since the mid-1900s is one of the most pronounced transitions the family has seen and is increasingly a global phenomenon. We explore the consequences of this transition for children’s health. We combine newly collected pilot data on child health outcomes (the first half of data available Sept 2016, final half is expected to be available Jan 2017) with 20 years of longitudinal data (the Chitwan Valley Family Study, CVFS) to explore the relationship between women’s work and children’s health outcomes in rural Chitwan, Nepal. We will explicitly model the selection of women into work and account for other, dramatic social changes occurring at the same time as women increasingly entered the work force. Preliminary results show that mother’s work is inversely related to child health but that the specific nature of the effect depends on the timing of this work relative to the child’s birth.