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The
hidden penalties of gender inequality:
fetal origins of ill-health
Siddiq
Osmania
University
of Ulster, UK Amartya
Sen , Trinity
College, Cambridge, UK
Economics
and Human Biology 1 (2003) 91-104 [PDF,
paper attached]
Abstract
".....This
paper is concerned with the interconnections between gender inequality
and maternal deprivation, on the one hand, and the health of children
(of either sex) and of adults that the children grow into (again, of
either sex). The basic message of the paper is that women's deprivation
in terms of nutrition and healthcare rebounds on the society as a whole
in the form of ill-health of their offspring-males and females
alike-both as children and as adults. There
are a variety of pathways through which women's deprivation can affect
the health of the society as a whole. This paper focuses on the pathways
that operate through undernourishment of the mother. Maternal
deprivation adversely affects the health of the fetus, which in turn
leads to long-term health risks that extend not just into childhood but
into adulthood as well. There
are, however, important differences in the way children and adults
experience the consequences of maternal deprivation via fetal
deprivation. In particular, the pathways that lead to their respective
risk factors and the circumstances under which those risk factors
actually translate into ill-health are very different. These differences
are best understood through the concept of 'overlapping health
transition' in which two different regimes of diseases coexist side by
side. Gender inequality exacerbates the old regime of diseases among the
less affluent through the pathway of childhood under- nutrition. At the
same time it also exacerbates the new regime of diseases among the
relatively more affluent through a pathway that has come to be known as
the 'Barker hypothesis'. Gender inequality thus leads to a double
jeopardy-simultaneously aggravating both regimes of diseases and thus
raising the economic cost of overlapping health transition. ......"
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