While much of the Global South has undergone sizable fertility declines in recent decades, many Sub Saharan African countries maintain fertility rates that are among the world’s highest, averaging over five children per woman. High fertility in these regions often coincides with poverty, promoting a stable steady state in which large, low-income families invest little in their children, which makes large families affordable; these “low-quality” children grow up to themselves earn low incomes and have large families. When African countries undergo economic change, growth does not always translate into higher investments in children’s human capital. In a rapidly developing African community, what are the household characteristics associated with increasing investments in children over time, giving them access to the resources to ultimately make quality investments in future generations?
I use two waves of panel census data (that is, a longitudinal survey of the entire population) from Ibo Island in Northern Mozambique to investigate this question from three perspectives: household economic circumstances, farming practices, and paternal absence. I collected the second wave of data in 2012, retrospectively linking individuals and households with their data from three years prior. With child stunting rates upwards of 40%—falling above the cutoff for “very high” prevalence of malnutrition— Northern Mozambique is an ideal location in which to investigate dietary investments in children. Likewise, recent data from Ibo Island provide valuable information with which to study the effects of rapid economic development. Between 2009 and 2012, for example, the island experienced enormous changes in its living conditions (e.g. arrival of electricity, growing ubiquity of mobile phones, sizeable declines in child stunting), as it began to transition from fishing village to tourism hub. Using demographic, economic, and nutritional data, I examine circumstances and decisions that may be characteristic of household conditions in the broader Sub-Saharan African region.
I begin by investigating household economic change and children’s stunting, using longitudinal census data that link individuals and households over time. Rapid economic change led to dramatic increases in the number of Ibo Island’s salaried positions between 2009 and 2012. A household’s livelihood transition from agriculture and/or fishing to an emerging salaried position is taken to represent improved income owing to the community’s economic growth. Children in fishing and agricultural households that underwent livelihood transitions experienced above-average improvements in their height-for-age Z-scores over time, indicating that income improvements are associated with investments in nutrition. These results demonstrate potential for continued investments in children’s human capital, as development proceeds and as expanded employment opportunities emerge.
Turning next to household farming practices, I investigate associations between farm composition and children’s dietary outcomes. In the Global South, many food-insecure individuals have diets that rely heavily on cereals and starchy roots without nutritionally sufficient consumption of vegetables, fruits, or proteins. While the relationship between dietary diversity and health is well documented in the literature, the role for crop diversity in promoting dietary diversity is less understood. I identify a strong link between household crop diversity and children’s dietary diversity, which I confirm to be a strong predictor of child height. The positive relationship between household crop diversity and child dietary diversity verifies that household-level small-farming practices have the potential to improve access to diverse foods in the absence of markets. While educational attainment is associated with reduced rates of household farming, crop composition varies meaningfully with education, and high rates of fruit production among educated farming households may explain strong links between household education, children’s dietary diversity, and child height: fruit production allows households to supplement their diets with nutritious foods not widely available for purchase.
Finally, the research focuses on investments in children as a function of the presence of their biological father in the household. Father absence from the household is expected to reduce paternal investments in children, but do other household members make investments that close the gap? I investigate educational investments on Ibo, where only one third of school-aged children live with their fathers. Results demonstrate a strong relationship between schooling and presence of the biological father, with educational participation rates over 10% higher for children who live with their fathers. Dropout rates were over a third higher for children whose fathers left the home between survey waves than for children whose fathers remained in the home. A household fixed effects model identifies higher educational participation among individuals who lived with their fathers than for cohabitants (step siblings, half siblings, etc.) whose fathers were absent. The results are aligned with family structure theory (in which traditional two-parent household structure promotes positive outcomes) and kin selection theory (in which familial altruism is driven by genetic relatedness).
