Seminar

A child feeding a child: Early mother’s marriage and child growth in India

MAASTRICHT & ONLINE: Our UNU-MERIT Seminar Series team is pleased to announce our upcoming research seminar featuring Amal Ahmad (Wageningen University).

Time
- Europe/Amsterdam
Event Contact
Sneha Pemalaputhen Marydas

In this hybrid research seminar on Thursday 17 October 2024 at 12:00 - 13:00 CEST, Amal Ahmad (Wageningen University) will present the findings from her paper 'A child feeding a child: Early mother’s marriage and child growth in India'.
 

Abstract from the paper:

Hundreds of millions of Indian children are too short for their age. In this paper we explore whether early marriage of women in India contributes to this phenomenon. Using India’s national health surveys and age at menarche as an instrument, we find that one year earlier marriage of the mother reduces her child’s height-for-age by 0.20 standard deviations. On mechanisms, we find that earlier-married mothers delay infant complementary feeding and breastfeed for less time; these practices appear to be influenced by both knowledge gaps and preference issues. Supporting the nutrition efforts of early-married mothers can markedly improve intergenerational well-being.

The Zoom link to join the seminar online can be found here. This event is open to the public; all who are interested in this topic are very welcome to join the seminar, and there is also the opportunity to ask our speaker questions at the end of her presentation.

For any queries related to our UNU-MERIT Seminar Series, please contact Sneha Marydas and Cecilia Seri by sending an email to seminars@merit.unu.edu.