Women's social power, child nutrition and poverty in Mali

Dominique Simon1, Alayne M Adams, Sangeetha Madhavan

  • 1Health and Addictions Research Inc.,Boston, MA 02116, USA.

While the macro-level association between poverty and child malnutrition is well-established, the concept of 'poverty' and its operationalization in terms of measures of socioeconomic status shed little or no light on the mechanisms through which malnutrition is created and/or prevented. This paper investigates a woman's social power, one such mechanism that may mediate the impact of poverty on childhood nutrition. This micro-level factor is examined using survey data on 402 children 5 years of age and younger and their 261 Fulbe mothers in rural Mali. A conceptual model of social power is developed and used to test the hypothesis that a mother's social power can predict her child's nutritional status.

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