Women’s Empowerment and Gender Inequalities in Adolescent Nutritional Status: Evidence from the Indonesian Family Life Survey

Recent studies show that women’s empowerment is a key factor in improving child nutrition. However, in contrast to the extensive knowledge on children under-five, the relation between mother’s position and adolescent nutritional status, including possible gender inequalities therein, is less well-known. Well-educated mothers are thought to have better knowledge about nutrition, more economic resources, and higher bargaining power for the benefit of their adolescent child. Empowered mothers are also thought to be more able to compensate gender biases in intra-household food allocation. We examined associations between women’s empowerment and gender inequality in adolescent nutrition using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) over the period 1993 to 2015. Our pooled sample consists of 13,877 observations of 10,420 adolescents belonging to 4,948 mothers. We use mother’s number of years of completed education, mother’s decision-making power, and mother’s labour force participation as empowerment indicators. We analyse relationships of these three indicators with adolescent’s height-for-age and BMI-for-age. Our results show gender differences in BMI-for-age but not in height-for-age. We find boys are on average thinner than girls. Our random-effect models show that in general, women’s empowerment have significant positive associations with height-for-age. However, only the mother’s labour force participation holds positive associations with BMI-for-age. Our fixed-effects models comparing nutritional status of boys and girls of the same household show smaller gender gaps in BMI-for-age of those whose mothers are more educated. Further analysis reveals that boys of more educated mothers consume significantly more instant noodles and carbonated beverages compared to girls. This result indicates well-educated mothers are able to compensate boys’ thinness, but not always in healthy ways. The fact that similar differences do not exist between boys and girls of less-educated mothers may be evidence of gender bias in new disguise

Ethnic differences in dietary diversity among primary school-aged children: Evidence from the Indonesian Family Life Survey

Previous studies on ethnic differences in dietary diversity have predominantly focused on explaining variance among adults of White, Black, and Hispanic origin, mostly with the North-American context. Although many low and middle-income countries comprise a wide range of ethnic groups, much less is known about ethnic differences in dietary diversity in such settings. Moreover, while previous research has primarily focused on adults, next to nothing is known about dietary diversity patterns among children. This study simultaneously addresses both knowledge gaps and analyses ethnic differences in dietary diversity of primary school-aged children of three indigenous ethnic groups in Indonesia: the Javanese who have a bilateral kinship system, the Batak with a more patrilineal system, and the traditionally matrilineal Minang (Ananta et al., 2015). Aside from examining the differences among these ethnic groups, disparities in dietary diversity within each ethnic group by children�s gender, birth order, and family socioeconomic status are also examined. The analyses are based on data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) covering the period 2000 to 2015, and consisting of 6,711 observations of primary school-age children age 6 to 11 years old who were born in 4,457 families. The Berry-Index score for dietary diversity is used as the outcome variable (Drescher et al., 2007). This score was constructed from data on individual food consumption recording the number of days a child had consumed a certain type of food during the week before the interview. Multiple linear regression with clustered standard errors at the family level were used to estimate the models. Interaction effects of ethnicity with gender, birth order, and family socioeconomic status were included to analyse within-ethnic related disparities in dietary diversity. The validation step prior the main analyses indicated that the constructed Berry-Index positively correlated with children�s nutritional status (height-for-age). The positive correlation means that consuming diverse food types leads to better health. The main results showed that the Javanese, which had the best overall nutritional status of the three ethnic groups, scored higher in dietary diversity than others. The interaction effects showed that among the matrilineal Minang, dietary diversity was gender-related with girls having a higher Berry-Index score than boys. While among the patrilineal Batak, children who were born in a family with high socioeconomic status have a higher Berry-Index score up to the level of those the Javanese. There were no within-ethnic group differences in dietary diversity by birth order. Further analyses on consumption at food group level showed that Minang girls consumed vegetables more frequently than boys. The analyses also found that although the affluent Batak children consumed vegetable slightly less frequent, they almost triple the less-affluent Batak�s number of days in a week on consuming dairy products

De levenskracht der bevolking. Sociale en demografische kwesties in de Lage Landen tijdens het interbellum Leuven:Universitaire Pers Leuven ,2010 9789058677891

Contains fulltext : 94838.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Jan Kok De levenskracht der bevolking. Sociale en demografische kwesties in de Lage Landen tijdens het interbellum Leuven:Universitaire Pers Leuven ,2010 978905867789

Intensification of family relations? Changes in the choice of marriage witnesses in the Netherlands, 1830-1950

Contains fulltext : 94486.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)This study examines whether and why a process of intensification of family relations took place during the long nineteenth century by investigating Dutch marriage couples’ selection of witnesses. The results show that during the period 1830-1950, lateral kin (siblings, siblings-in-law and cousins) were increasingly selected as marriage witnesses, at the expense of professional witnesses and patronage relations. This ‘lateralization’ process accelerated after 1890, with the take-off of industrialization and urbanization in the Netherlands and continued at least until 1950. The intensification of kin ties was not only related to economic development and social class formation, it was part of a broader cultural process of familiarization, which started among the urban bourgeoisie in the western part of the Netherlands, but spread to other regions and social groups.33 p

The Interplay of Family Systems, Social Networks and Fertility in Europe Cohorts Born Between 1920 and 1960

Despite important variations in regional family systems, little research has been done to assess the effects of these differences on fertility and thus on families’ economic status. Even less attention has been paid to the effects of deviating from these regionally embedded norms in terms of network compositions. People's social networks may not conform to the region's view of the ideal family, while this could have important implications for their fertility behaviour. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper aims to answer two questions: to what extent do family systems shape family size, and to what extent do deviations from regional family system norms in terms of social network composition result in differences in completed fertility? To answer these questions, we use the first two waves of the ‘Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement’ and derive indicators describing regional family systems and people's social networks. We test the influence of these covariates on the completed fertility of cohorts born between 1920 and 1960 in 13 European countries. Our results show that family system norms, and deviations from them in terms of specific social networks, play an important role in determining family size

De plek in de kinderrij. Geboortepositie en huwelijkstiming in vijf Nederlandse provincies, 1840-1922

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Courtship and bridal pregnancy in The Netherlands, 1870-1950

Item does not contain fulltextAlthough frowned upon, bridal pregnancies were a common phenomenon in early twentieth-century Netherlands, as they were in many European countries. However, there was a marked regional and social variation in their occurrence. This variation still awaits explanation. In this period with its ineffective forms of contraception, sexuality before marriage was risky. Who took those risks and in what circumstances? What cues from the environment ‘allowed’ (or refrained) unmarried couples from having sex? And what is the relevant ‘environment’ for adolescent lovers: what was the role of their peer group, of their parents, and of their church? In this article, we have used a dataset of nearly ten thousand fertile marriages (contracted between 1870 and 1950) with detailed information on the family backgrounds of the spouses. Moreover, we have combined this dataset with a questionnaire on local courtship customs in the early twentieth century. This allows us to perform a multilevel regression analysis of the likelihood of a premarital pregnancy, in which we can look simultaneously at the effects of social class, religion, family composition, characteristics of the couples themselves (level of homogamy), and local courtship customs. Our analysis of courtship customs focuses on communal norms about the timing of courtship (how young could one start), but especially on local practices regarding who (if at all) supervised the meetings of the lovers. Our results confirm earlier findings that bridal pregnancy in The Netherlands was strongly concentrated in proletarian as well as in protestant groups. We find evidence for parental tolerance for sexual urges of (endogamous) young couples who posed no threat to the planned property transmission. However, we also find evidence that youths deliberately advanced a marriage (using a pregnancy as leverage) to gain independence. Local and regional courtship customs seemed not strongly associated with high or low levels of bridal pregnancies.27 p

Leren van historische levenslopen

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