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The Effect of Workforce Participation and Household Income Contribution on Women’s Healthcare Empowerment in Rural Bangladesh

By Hannah Wang

Abstract
Women in Bangladesh have gained increased access to paid work in the past decade yet
still experience limited choices and access to resources, which threatens their ability to exercise
control over healthcare for themselves and their children. Several collective household
bargaining theories hypothesize a link between women’s workforce participation and
empowerment. This paper uses a cross-sectional approach and survey data collected at the end of
a randomized trial field experiment in rural Bangladesh from 2007 to 2017 to examine health
empowerment outcomes for 7,151 young women ages 14 to 32. The results show that women
who work for income are expected to be more health empowered, specifically due to an
increased ability to make their own health decisions. As a woman contributes more income to her
household, her health empowerment is expected to increase, through increased abilities to make
her own health decisions, purchase medicine for herself, and seek medical treatment
independently. Greater mobility and stronger female-positive attitudes towards gender norms are
potential mechanisms through which paid work and household income contribution can translate
into health empowerment. Furthermore, higher total household income, having children, and
being more educated than her husband are expected to increase a woman’s health empowerment.
These results are significant while controlling for the effects of various individual and household
characteristics.

Professor Erica M. Field, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle P. Connolly, Faculty Advisor

JEL classification: J1; J16; I15

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Questions?

Undergraduate Program Assistant
Matthew Eggleston
dus_asst@econ.duke.edu

Director of the Honors Program
Michelle P. Connolly
michelle.connolly@duke.edu