Testing for the endogenous nature between women's empowerment and antenatal health care utilization: evidence from a cross-sectional study in Egypt.

Hassan H M Zaky,Dina M Armanious,Mohamed Ali Hussein

doi:10.1155/2014/403402

Hassan H M Zaky, Dina M Armanious + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/403402

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Abstract

Women's relative lack of decision-making power and their unequal access to employment, finances, education, basic health care, and other resources are considered to be the root causes of their ill-health and that of their children. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the interactive relation between women's empowerment and the use of maternal health care. Two model specifications are tested. One assumes no correlation between empowerment and antenatal care while the second specification allows for correlation. Both the univariate and the recursive bivariate probit models are tested. The data used in this study is EDHS 2008. Factor Analysis Technique is also used to construct some of the explanatory variables such as the availability and quality of health services indicators. The findings show that women's empowerment and receiving regular antenatal care are simultaneously determined and the recursive bivariate probit is a better approximation to the relationship between them. Women's empowerment has significant and positive impact on receiving regular antenatal care. The availability and quality of health services do significantly increase the likelihood of receiving regular antenatal care.

Highlights

In 2000, at the millennium summit, all 191 United Nations member states signed the millennium declaration which sets eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by the year 2015
The fifth Millennium Development Goal calls for improving maternal health care and includes a target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015 and achieving universal access to reproductive health through antenatal care coverage
This confirms our a priori expectations that receiving regular antenatal care and women’s empowerment are simultaneously determined and that the recursive bivariate probit model specification is a better representation of this relationship than the univariate probit model

Summary

Introduction

In 2000, at the millennium summit, all 191 United Nations member states signed the millennium declaration which sets eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by the year 2015. The fifth Millennium Development Goal calls for improving maternal health care and includes a target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015 and achieving universal access to reproductive health through antenatal care coverage. If the world achieves the fifth Millennium Development Goal by 2015, more than two million women will survive childbirth [1]. Women’s relative lack of decision-making power and their unequal access to employment, finances, education, basic health care, and other resources are considered to be the root causes of their ill-health and that of their children [2]. Empowering women is critical to advancing human development and achieving progress towards the MDGs

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