Peer-reviewed article
Women's Empowerment, Sanitation and Health: Empirical Insights From Developing Countries
Alex Opoku Acheampong, Eric Evans Osei Opoku, Janet Dzator ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study uses data from 115 developing countries between 2000 and 2022 to look at how women's political empowerment and access to sanitation relate to population health. Health is measured by life expectancy and by maternal, infant and under-five mortality. The authors report that both greater women's political empowerment and better access to sanitation are linked to better health outcomes. They also report that sanitation is linked to better health more strongly in countries where women's political empowerment is higher. Results differ across geopolitical regions.
Key points
- Women's political empowerment (civil liberties, civil society participation, political participation) significantly improves life expectancy and lowers maternal, infant and under-five mortality, on average.
- Access to sanitation services significantly improves life expectancy and maternal and child health outcomes.
- Women's political empowerment strengthens the effect of sanitation on health outcomes.
- Results are robust across different econometric techniques but differ across geopolitical regions.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, so the details of the data, measures and regional differences cannot be assessed. The analysis is a national-level cross-country panel and is not an evaluation of a specific intervention. Child health is only one part of the outcomes studied, and the countries analysed are not named.
Abstract
ABSTRACT We analyse the effect of women's empowerment and access to sanitation on health outcomes using panel data from 115 developing economies between 2000 and 2022. This study adopts a panel data approach and estimation techniques capable of handling cross‐sectional dependency and endogeneity issues. The results based on the Lewbel two‐stage least squares method indicate that, on average, women's political empowerment, measured with women's civil liberties, women's civil society participation, and women's political participation, significantly improves population health outcomes measured with life expectancy and maternal, infant and under‐five mortality. The findings also show that access to sanitation services significantly enhances life expectancy and maternal and child health outcomes. The study further demonstrates that women's political empowerment positively moderates the impact of sanitation on health outcomes, suggesting that in countries with better (higher) women's political empowerment, sanitation essentially leads to better health outcomes and vice versa. The results are consistently robust across different econometric techniques but differ across geopolitical regions. The outcome of the study is important to public health policies, as it underscores that policies that enhance gender inclusivity in the political sphere and access to sanitation services would be valuable for improving population health outcomes in developing countries.