The Children Nutrition Effect of Woman Local Employment: Evidence from Underdeveloped Areas

The nutritional health status during childhood is crucial to individual growth, family development, and regional human capital accumulation. Using a quasi-experimental design of women's local employment in poverty alleviation workshops, this study empirically analyzes the impact and mechanism of women's (mothers') local employment on children's nutritional intake within the framework of cooperative bargaining between couples in determining child nutrition, based on micro-level survey data from Hunan, Hebei, and Guangxi Provinces. The findings of this research are as follows: First, women's local employment has a significant positive impact on children's daily calorie and protein intake, with a greater impact observed in enhancing the calorie intake. Second, women's local employment has a stronger impact on enhancing children's calorie intake during early childhood and protein intake during primary school, with no significant gender disparity in the effect of nutritional improvement. Third, shedding light on the mechanism, women's income demonstrates a significant positive mediating effect on children's calorie and protein intake, whereas the bargaining power within the family solely exhibits a significant positive mediating effect on children's protein intake, and the mediating effect of caregiving time is not found to be significant. Finally, this paper offers policy recommendations regarding rural women's labor force employment and industrial project selection, the establishment of a sound women's employment market in the context of new urbanization, and the enhancement of women's capacity and feasibility to participate in local employment, so as to improve the positive external influence of women's local employment and promote family capacity building from the perspective of women's employment support.