Women’s empowerment and infant mortality in Latin America: evidence from 286 cities

Ortigoza, Ana; Braverman, Ariela; Hessel, Philipp; Cecco, Vanessa Di; Friche, Amélia Augusta de Lima; Caiaffa, Waleska Teixeira; Roux, Ana V. Diez

doi:10.1080/23748834.2021.1908794

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Indeed, there are important gaps and heterogeneities in the measurement of women's empowerment, and the application of existing measures is still limited [12]. We are not aware of any previous research studying the relationship between women's empowerment and excess weight in Latin America, but prior evidence in cities of the region showed that women's labor force participation (as a proxy of women's empowerment) was negatively associated with infant mortality rate, another key population health indicator [38].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our study has some limitations. We acknowledge that the score used to proxy women's empowerment was based on census data and built upon employment and education indicators, not reflecting other dimensions of the empowerment of women such as decision-making power and gender-based violence, among others [38,61]. We did not include in the analysis the total fertility rate due to a lack of data; however, prior research has argued that obesity due to multiparity in women is, at least in part, driven by the social context in which the reproductive rights of women are situated [7].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We included two exposures at the city level: labor women's empowerment and the Gini coefficient. In brief, labor women's empowerment measures account for gender inequalities in education and employment [37,38]. We operationalized labor women's empowerment by means of a score developed using national census data on employment and education disaggregated by cities and sex and derived by principal component analysis [38].…”

Section: Exposuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In brief, labor women's empowerment measures account for gender inequalities in education and employment [37,38]. We operationalized labor women's empowerment by means of a score developed using national census data on employment and education disaggregated by cities and sex and derived by principal component analysis [38]. The data used to develop the score included: the ratio of the female-to-male proportion of the population aged 25 or older who completed secondary education or above, the ratio of the female-to-male proportion of the population aged 25 or older who completed university or above, the labor force participation rate among the female population 15 years or above, and the ratio of the labor force participation rate among females to the labor force participation rate among males (15 years or older).…”

Section: Exposuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are Women’s Empowerment and Income Inequality Associated with Excess Weight in Latin American Cities?

et al. 2022

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While income gradients and gender inequalities in excess weight have been noted elsewhere, data from Latin American cities is lacking. We analyzed gender-specific associations between city-level women’s empowerment and income inequality with individual-level overweight/obesity, assessing how these associations vary by individual education or living conditions within cities in Latin America. Data came from national surveys and censuses, and was compiled by the SALURBAL project (Urban Health in Latin America). The sample included 79,422 individuals (58.0% women), living in 538 sub-cities, 187 cities, and 8 countries. We used gender-stratified Poisson multilevel models to estimate the Prevalence Rate Ratios (PRR) for overweight/obesity (body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2) per a unit change in city-level women’s empowerment (proxied by a score that measures gender inequalities in employment and education) and income inequality (proxied by income-based Gini coefficient). We also tested whether individual education or sub-city living conditions modified such associations. Higher city labor women’s empowerment (in women) and higher city Gini coefficient (in men) were associated with a lower prevalence of overweight/obesity (PRR = 0.97 (95%CI 0.94, 0.99) and PRR = 0.94 (95%CI 0.90, 0.97), respectively). The associations varied by individual education and sub-city living conditions. For labor women’s empowerment, we observed weakened associations towards the null effect in women with lower education and in residents of sub-cities with worse living conditions (men and women). For the Gini coefficient, the association was stronger among men with primary education, and a negative association was observed in women with primary education. Our findings highlight the need for promoting equity-based policies and interventions to tackle the high prevalence of excess weight in Latin American cities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Exposuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Exposuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are Women’s Empowerment and Income Inequality Associated with Excess Weight in Latin American Cities?

et al. 2022

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“…There are, however, also catalytic effects related to women's rights programmes. Whereas the intended objective is to improve women's rights, the improvement also has a positive effect on other domains such as reduced rates of infant mortality [111][112][113].…”

Section: Catalytic Spillover Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing International Development Cooperation: Becoming Intentional about Unintended Effects

et al. 2021

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International headlines often make mention of side effects of international cooperation, ranging from aid-fuelled corruption to the negative side effects of volunteer tourism. The OECD Development Assistance Committee, an international forum of many of the largest providers of aid, prescribes that evaluators should consider if an intervention has unintended effects. Yet the little that is known suggests that few evaluations of international cooperation projects systematically assess their unintended effects. To address this gap in assessing unintended effects, this study develops an operational typology of 10 types of unintended effects of international cooperation that have emerged in the literature and applies this to all 644 evaluations of the Netherlands’ development cooperation between 2000 and 2020 using structured text mining with manual verification. The results show that approximately 1 in 6 evaluations carefully considered unintended effects and identified 177 different ones. With the exception of 5, these could be classified in 9 of the 10 typologies, indicating that this typology can guide international development cooperation to systematically consider and assess its unintended effects. International development planners, researchers and evaluators are recommended to henceforth make use of and improve this operational typology.

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Double burden of malnutrition in 115 Latin American cities: An ecological analysis

Mazariegos,

Sánchez,

Ortigoza

et al. 2024

Repro Female Child Health

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BackgroundUsing harmonized aggregated data on health and socioeconomic environments in Latin American cities (from the Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL) study), we assessed the association of city‐level contextual factors with the prevalence of the double burden of malnutrition (DBM) in urban settings.MethodsThis ecological study used aggregated survey data from 115 Latin American cities within five countries (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru) collected between 2008 and 2016. DBM was defined as the coexistence of stunting in children under 5 years and overweight/obesity among adult women at the city‐level. We ran ordinal logistic regression models to examine macrolevel contextual factors that might explain the city‐level DBM. Independent variables were city‐level socioeconomic development index, women educational attainment and women labor force.ResultsOut of 115 Latin American cities, 19 cities from five countries were experiencing a moderate to high burden of stunting and simultaneously a very high burden of overweight/obesity in adult women. All cities had overweight/obesity prevalence above 40%. A poor social environment, higher levels of women education and greater women labor force at the city level were associated with greater levels of DBM.ConclusionSome Latin American cities are still facing moderate and high DBM, while all cities are experiencing an alarming high burden of overweight/obesity. Social macro‐level factors such as poor social environment, high women education and high women labor force were associated with the coexistence of stunting in children and overweight/obesity in adult women.

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Women’s empowerment and infant mortality in Latin America: evidence from 286 cities

Cited by 10 publications

References 27 publications

Are Women’s Empowerment and Income Inequality Associated with Excess Weight in Latin American Cities?

Are Women’s Empowerment and Income Inequality Associated with Excess Weight in Latin American Cities?

Assessing International Development Cooperation: Becoming Intentional about Unintended Effects

Double burden of malnutrition in 115 Latin American cities: An ecological analysis

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