Maternal employment and childhood malnutrition in Ecuador

Background: This paper estimates the causal impact of maternal employment on several childhood malnutrition outcomes in Ecuador, to understand the trade-off between the time mothers devote to work and child-caring activities. Methods: We use exogenous regional variation in maternal labour market conditions to account for the potential endogeneity of mothers’ employment. The analysis employs the Ecuadorian National Health and Nutrition Survey 2018 and the Living Conditions Survey 2014. Results: The instrumental variable estimations indicated that maternal employment increases the probability of having stunted children by between 4.3 and 18.2 percent, while no significant effect was found on children suffering from wasting, underweight or overweight. We found that children with more educated, richer mothers appeared to be the most negatively affected. Inconclusive effects by mother’s overweight status were reported. The results were robust to several robustness checks. Conclusions: Overall our findings suggest that the maternal time devoted to childcare and feeding activities is far more important for children’s health than the additional income that a working mother may obtain and this is even stronger for children from more affluent and educated mothers. These results are aligned with other evidence pointing out to the need of eliminating the administrative and policy downsides of the government programs for achieving a national strategy to combat children malnutrition in Ecuador.JEL classification: I15, J22, C21