Family Matters: The Effect of Parents' Marital Quality on Children's Height in India

Abstract

This thesis explores the role of marriage quality in India in determining children’s health outcomes, specifically height adjusted for age. I hypothesized that the better the parents’ marriage quality, the taller the child would be due to a healthier social situation that allowed for greater allowance to the wife of income and resources, which she could use to take care of the child. In India, it is often the mother who takes care of the child. Family structures are integral to the life of any nation. I chose to focus on children’s health to find how marital quality or its disruption may negatively impact the development of children. Major themes in this thesis include gender relations, child health, women’s decision-making, and development in India. I used the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a multi-survey, panel set of data of more than 42,000 households in India, to obtain questions for my index of marital quality (the independent variable) and the heights adjusted by age of the corresponding family’s children (the dependent variable). The Respondents were ever-married women, ages 15-49, with children. The index included questions about frequency of spousal discussion of current events, local politics, and household concerns and whether in the community it was common for husbands to beat their wives for various reasons. I then ran a linear regression on these variables. I also held income (as measured by the log of household consumption), mother’s education, caste, and religion constant in the regression. I found that parents’ marriage quality does affect children’s health. However, only a few of the variables I included in the marital quality index significantly affected children’s height. Major findings included the fact that women’s education holds a significant bearing on children’s height. Women’s ability to own cash positively affected children’s height. Children of those who responded that it was common in their community for husbands to beat their wives due to bad cooking had statistically significant lower height. One puzzle I found was that for both the respondent and the husband, either of them deciding what to do about the sick child turned out to have a negative effect. These and other findings are discussed in this thesis. Although the results are not entirely conclusive, they point to several important trends. Increased women’s empowerment through financial independence and mechanisms to improve decision-making voice (perhaps discussions with village or cultural leaders to outline benefits of having women’s voice added to discussion) would greatly help to improve children’s health. Note that I am not advocating complete economic independence, but rather more of an equality within the marriage. Another policy implication is government’s role in restriction of domestic violence. In addition, special attention should be given to children in India to provide them with environments that are healthy and conducive to their physical, emotional, and educational growth. These policy implications stand for not only the nation of India but for the global stage, as the themes of family, including the complex issues of gender relations and parent-child relations are universal.