title: Testing for the endogenous nature between women's empowerment and antenatal health care utilization: evidence from a cross-sectional study in Egypt.
abstract: Women's relative lack of decision-making power and their unequal access to employment, finances, education, basic health care, and other resources 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 the interactive relation between women's empowerment and the use of maternal health care. Two model specifications are tested. One assumes no correlation between empowerment and antenatal care while the second specification allows for correlation. Both the univariate and the recursive bivariate probit models are tested. The data used in this study is EDHS 2008. Factor Analysis Technique is also used to construct some of the explanatory variables such as the availability and quality of health services indicators. The findings show that women's empowerment and receiving regular antenatal care are simultaneously determined and the recursive bivariate probit is a better approximation to the relationship between them. Women's empowerment has significant and positive impact on receiving regular antenatal care. The availability and quality of health services do significantly increase the likelihood of receiving regular antenatal care.
authors.affiliation: School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The American University in Cairo and Social Research Center of The American University in Cairo, New Cairo 11835, Egypt ; Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt.
authors.forename: Hassan H M
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6371-9835
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Zaky
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Giza 12613, Egypt.
authors.forename: Dina M
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5764-0349
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Armanious
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Commerce, South Valley University, Qena 83523, Egypt.
authors.forename: Mohamed Ali
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Hussein
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making; D004534:Egypt; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008429:Maternal Welfare; D008875:Middle Aged; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D016387:Women's Health