Agricultural market participation impact on gender health inequality: Evidence from Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

A simple choice model of bargaining with bilateral matching and a transferable utility function is developed to empirically analyze the implications of entry into the agricultural market on gender health inequality in Guinea-Bissau, in terms of the probability of access to health services for women relative to men across different kinship systems. We found that agricultural market participation reduced gender health inequality. Women participating in the cashew nuts market are more likely to have access to health services than those not participating in the same household structure. Once entering the agricultural market, they increased healthcare resources. Schooling and access to information and communication technology (ICT) improve opportunities for generating resources and knowledge about their healthcare. The negative effect of education, healthcare expenditures, and access to ICT on gender health inequality is statistically significant at a conventional level. Conversely, the cultural and regional factors of ethnic groups were not statistically significant.