Böcker av Heather Megan Griffis

Empowerment and demographic outcomes has grown, despite the increase in empowermentresearch, findings on the relationship between empowerment and demographic indicators areinconsistent. Particularly in the health and mortality literature, this inconsistency is due to severalfactors, including differing definitions, measures, and social contexts of empowerment. Theinclusion of social networks and social institutions may better inform the definitions andmeasurement of empowerment. Data for this study comes from the 2004 Malawi Demographicand Health Survey from 5,982 mothers with 8,286 infants and children. Multivariate logistichazard models, conducted separately for infants and children, investigate how demographic,socioeconomic, proximate, and empowerment measures are related to child mortality. Resultsshow that household wealth is an important factor related to both infant and child mortality. Forchildren, this relationship is mediated by other demographic factors. For both infants andchildren, being born to a mother who is divorced increases the odds of death (although this ismediated by birth characteristics for infants). (decision-making about visiting family or friends and control over contact with family) is animportant factor related to mortality. For children, if the final say about health care decisions aremade by the husband (or someone else), the likelihood of mortality increases. However, despitethese significant findings, the majority of empowerment measures are not significantly related toboth infant and child mortality.