Reducing children's malnutrition by increasing mothers' health insurance coverage: A focus on stunting and underweight across 32 sub-Saharan African countries

Abstract

Despite the potential role of a mother's health insurance coverage in enhancing her children's health and well-being, research examining its impact on children's nutritional outcomes remains sparse. We examine the link between mothers' health insurance subscription and child malnutrition using data extracted from the Demographic and Health Surveys program across 32 sub-Saharan African countries on 109,019 children under the age of 5. We measure child stunting and underweight using height-for-age z-scores and weight-for-age z-scores, respectively. After addressing endogeneity, we found that mothers' health insurance subscription decreases child stunting and underweight. These results are robust to different approaches to addressing endogeneity and different measures of child stunting and underweight. The effect of mothers' health insurance subscription on stunting and underweight is more pronounced among girls than boys. These findings further demonstrate that mothers' health insurance subscription influences child stunting and underweight through maternal healthcare utilization and the provision of diversified diets to children.