The impact of women's employment status on household food security at different income levels in Ghana

Abstract

The presence of working women may well increase the food consumption of poorer households, even if the women have to travel away from the home to earn money. For richer households, the net effect on calorie intake and calorie cost may well be zero or even negative as food, becomes a less important component of the budget. This hypothesis of different net effects at either end of the income distribution was tested with household-level data from Ghana. At the mean of the Ghanaian data, household food security is negatively affected when women work outside the home. Howevever, the small net effect at the mean of the data set may mask very different net effects at either end of the income distribution. -from Author