CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Doolotova, Adzhar |
|---|---|
| Title | Maternal Employment and Child Health: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan |
| Summary | In this study, I examine the effect of maternal labor supply on child health, using data on parents with at least one child below the age of 6 from the ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ survey from 2012–2013. Specifically, my focus is on the causal effect maternal hours of work per day have on her child’s Body Mass Index and the probability of her child being underweight. I use an identification strategy with Instrumental Variables (IVs) to account for potential endogeneity that may arise in an Ordinary Least Squares regression framework; the two IVs I use are mother’s career attitudes and employment status of child’s father. To the extent the IV exogeneity requirements hold, my results indicate that maternal employment improves child BMI and leads to a reduction of the propensity of the child being overweight significant at 10% only when control variables included, driven by boys and young children. With respect to policy implications, these results suggest that it is recommended to support working mothers by promoting the father’s role in childcare, investing in childcare facilities, and increasing health awareness among the population. |
| Supervisor | Molnár, Tímea Laura |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/doolotova_adzhar.pdf |
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