Is Women Autonomy an Issue in Health Care? Evidences from Central and Eastern India

Abstract

The focus of the study is to see whether women autonomy has any role in controlling the health status of members in the family. An indexis computed throughwomendecision makingauthority. Acomparative analysis hasbeencarried outusingdata fromfour states in India – Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Chhattisgarh in Central region and Bihar and Jharkhand in Eastern region. The tribal concentration is high in these states. The data have been taken from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) of 2005–2006. The sample sizes are 920 for Bihar, 668 for Jharkhand, 1,399 for MP and 748 for Chhattisgarh. Thus, a total of 3,735 women were taken for the analysis. The result shows that women's household decision making authority does not always significantly affect the health status, rather socio-economic factors play more significant role in improving both women and child health status in the four states of India.