Effect of Women's Education, Wealth and Empowerment status on Maternal Health Service Utilization; a road map for developing human capital

Background: The women education, socio economic wellbeing and empowerment status are in particularly associated with the achievement of Millennium Development Goals of eliminating extreme poverty, promoting universal primary... [ view full abstract ]

Background: The women education, socio economic wellbeing and empowerment status are in particularly associated with the achievement of Millennium Development Goals of eliminating extreme poverty, promoting universal primary education and promoting gender equality and women’s Empowerment. To date inequitable use of maternal health services utilization is found to exist in our society despite of known effective policy measures. This study explores how improvement in socioeconomic, educational and empowerment status of women can contribute to increase maternal health service utilization and thus it is reasonable to assume that greater health services use may increase women’s human capital.
Methods: Data were obtained from Pakistan Demographic Health Survey (PDHS) 2012. Association between the three key maternal healthcare services; contraceptive use, antenatal care (ANC) and skilled birth attendance with socioeconomic wellbeing, educational and empowerment status of women was studied through secondary analyses comprising of univariate and multivariate logistic regression by complex sample method.
Results: Inequities in women’s socioeconomic status, educational attainment and empowerment were found to be significantly associated with low use of maternal health services as compared to women that were better off .Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the odds of using modern contraception 1.52(1.24-1.86)and attending ANC 3.68(2.98-4.54) and use of skilled birth attendance 2.94(2.41-3.59) were higher for women with secondary or higher education than women with no education. As expected poorest women compared to their richest counterpart were less likely to have skilled birth attendance 0.35(0.27-0.44), ANC 0.50(0.39-0.63) and modern contraceptive use 0.46(0.34-0.61). Similarly empowered women were almost twice likely to use modern contraceptive methods.
Conclusion: Growth in maternal health service utilization aimed at developing human capital can be augmented by parallel investments in addressing socioeconomic development and gender based inequalities.