The Relationship between Women's Empowerment and Antenatal Health Care in Egypt

Dina Armanious, Cairo University
Hassan H. M. Zaky, American University in Cairo
Mohamed Hussein, South Valley University

Antenatal health care utilization is very important not only for mothers but also for babies because it is leading to reduce maternal and child mortality. Women’s relative lack of decision-making power and their unequal access to employment, finances, education, basic health care are considered to be the root causes of their ill-health and that of their children. The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether women's empowerment and receiving regular antenatal care are simultaneously determined. The Recursive Bivariate Probit model is used to achieve this goal. Factor analysis technique is used to construct availability and quality of health services indicators. The recursive bivariate probit estimates show that women's empowerment and receiving regular antenatal care are simultaneously determined. Additionally, women's empowerment has a significant and positive impact on receiving regular antenatal care. This finding confirms that women's empowerment is crucial to improve maternal health care in developing countries.