Abstract |
This paper estimates reduced form equations, derived from an economic model of household production, to analyze the level of household and community level variables on child nutrition in rural Cote d'Ivoire. Of particular concern are the contributions made by parental education, household wealth, and community characteristics, some of which are manipulable by government policy. The results show that both a mother's and a father's education have positive effects on weight for height, and that the mothers education has positive effects (though not precisely estimated) on height. The impact of community characteristics is strong. Of these, local wage rates, the health environment and the quality of health infrastructure seem to matter most. Unobserved household level factors are shown to be quite important, which suggests the need to account for them in an explicit way. In addition, there seem to be strong effects of intrahousehold distribution, particularly for children of household heads and their senior wives |