Philippines
Effects of Childbearing on the Quality of Women's Lives
Increasing the spacing of births and reducing the total number of births may give women increased opportunities for income generating activities that will, in turn, benefit them and their families. A previous analysis of a cohort of childbearing women in Cebu, Philippines, found that childbearing significantly reduced the likelihood that women would work for pay. Those who did work and who stopped childbearing had more substantial increases in both hourly and total earnings than those who worked and continued to bear children. Part of the improvement in earnings occurred, however, because women increased the number of hours worked per week.
Study Design
To determine the effects of childbearing on women's well-being and to learn whether increased earnings were associated with simultaneous improvements in other aspects of women's lives, researchers from the University of North Carolina, Family Health International (FHI) and the University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines, analyzed data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS), collected in 1983–86, and from the follow-up study during 1991–92.
The original survey recruited 3,327 pregnant women from 33 barangays in the Cebu City metropolitan area, who subsequently had a birth or pregnancy termination in a one-year period beginning in 1983. A follow-up survey was successfully conducted with 2,395 of the women in 1991.
Quality of life measures included housing quality, household assets, household conveniences, women's nutritional status and child well-being.
Research Findings
- Women's work in the Philippines was primarily motivated by economic necessity. In focus group discussions with women from different socioeconomic circumstances, women said that they would prefer not to work if family income was sufficient. A high household income reduced the chance that a woman would work unless she was also highly educated. Thus, for the majority of women from poor families, working is deemed necessary to meet basic family needs.
- Women who elected to have no more pregnancies subsequent to 1983 were financially better off to begin with, and they remained better off. Each additional pregnancy after 1983 decreased the well-being of women by 1991.
- Subsequent pregnancy had a highly significant negative effect for all measures of well-being.
- The well-being score for the child born in 1983 declined with each additional pregnancy of the mother. One-fourth of the women had moved to a new residence within the Metro Cebu area from 1983 to 1991. Moving had a negative effect on housing and assets, in part because many may have moved into smaller houses as they moved from extended families into smaller nuclear family households.
- For women working in 1983 and 1991, change in women's income had a significant, positive effect on housing, assets and conveniences. There was no significant effect of change in income on mother's nutritional status or child well-being.
Conclusions
The dimensions of well-being in this analysis included material aspects of women's lives, their nutritional status and health, and developmental outcomes of their children. Analyses showed that women with no subsequent pregnancy scored higher on all measures than women who continued childbearing. With the exception of maternal nutritional status, the differences were all significant. Average quality of housing, value of assets, and ownership of specific assets showed improvement from baseline to 1991. Improvements were significantly greater for households where women had no additional pregnancies.
The changes likely to be of greatest importance in reducing the domestic labor burden of women were those related to the presence of conveniences, which women's earnings helped purchase. Having water piped into the household eliminated the time-and-labor-demanding chore of fetching water. Having a gas stove eliminated the burden of gathering wood and tending cooking fires, and having a refrigerator meant that women may shop less frequently for food.
The positive effects of women's earnings on improvements in various measures of well-being support the theory that women's earnings are likely to be used to purchase goods that improve quality of life for the family.
Study Details
This summary is based on the paper: Adair LS, Borja J, Bisgrove EZ. Effects of Childbearing on Quality of Women's Lives. Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1996. The work was supported by the Women's Studies Project through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
