Role of Women Empowerment in Determining Children’s Illness Rate: A case Study from two Districts of Manipur

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This study examines the role of women in determining the children illness rate in two districts of Manipur. The analysis is based on a primary survey of 300 randomly selected married women having children with less than five years of age in Kakching and Chandel districts of Manipur. The study focuses on enabling factors of women as a measurement of women empowerment such as women’s education, labor force participation, access to formal and informal credit, access to mass media and print media. Bivariate analyses find that there is significant variation in the reported illness among the children in relation to their mothers’ socio-demographic indicators which include mothers’ education, occupation, work status, age at marriage, region of residence and district. The logistic regression finds statistically significant impact of women’s enabling factors such as access to media, access to microcredits and women’s education level in determining children’s illness rate. Thus, our regression analyses shed light on the importance of women empowerment in determining the children’s illness rates. Our study also fills the gap in the existing literature by exploring the role of women empowerment in determining the morbidity or illness among children. Further, our findings prove that a positive change in gender relations can improve the health conditions of children which is a valuable insight, especially for economically backward states.