Women’s involvement in intra-household decision-making and infant and young child feeding practices in Central Asia

Abdurazzakova, Dilnovoz; Kosec, Katrina; and Parpievd, Ziyodullo. 2024. Women’s involvement in intra-household decision-making and infant and young child feeding practices in Central Asia. World Development 178 (June 2024): 106572. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2024.106572

This paper examines the relationship between women’s empowerment and infant and young child feeding practices in Central Asia using Demographic and Health Survey datasets collected during 1995–2017. We employ a measure of women’s empowerment with three dimensions that is available for many recent surveys as well as a measure of decision-making power over use of one’s own income present for income-earning mothers in all surveys. We identify a positive association between a woman’s decision-making power—a measure of her instrumental agency—and adherence to World Health Organization–recommended feeding practices. We find little significant association between a woman’s attitude toward domestic violence, or her degree of social independence, and adherence to recommended feeding practices. Our results further show that the association between women’s decision-making power and feeding practices varies little with child gender, whether or not she cohabitates with her mother-in-law, or household wealth. We thus provide evidence from Central Asia that policies and programs intended to empower women can improve child feeding practices, with similar benefits across a variety of household types.