This thesis examines the role of gender in the achievement of the food and nutrition security in rural Bangladesh. It does this through the use of anthropometric measures as well intra-household allocation of calories and micronutrients. Quantile regression estimation is used to examine the impact of negative shocks on the calorie and micronutrient intake of individuals and the extent to which gender targeted technology helps these individuals to mitigate the impact of these shocks. Overall, both illness and floods are the two dominant shocks but the magnitude of floods is higher. In fact, I find evidence of women's calorie intake being affected by three negative shocks namely: asset (loss of livestock, crop, productive and consumption assets), illness (loss of income due to the household head being ill and medical expenses due to illness of any person) and flood while that of men is affected only by the latter two. On the other hand, the calorie intake of children in certain quantiles are affected negatively by asset, illness, flood, death (death of the main earner and other earners) and wedding (dowry and other wedding payments). In relation to micro nutrients, I also find strong evidence of both floods and illness along with assets reducing the micronutrient intake of individuals. However, despite the reduction in calorie and micronutrient intake of individuals when negative shocks occur, technology that targets women helps all individuals to mitigate the impact of these shocks except in the event of flooding. In addition, Two-Stage least Squares, Limited Maximum Likelihood and Continuously Updating Estimator models are used to examine the impact of a woman's status on the nutritional status of her child/children because of the presence of weak instruments. I find that a woman's bargaining power - measured using the control of current assets - has a positive a positive and significant impact on the 8MI of her child/children. These findings have significant implications for the achievement of food and nutrition security in poor countries, especially in Asia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:658035 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Gaskin-Peters, Natasha Theresa |
| Publisher | University of Reading |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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