Effect of Women’s Decision-Making Autonomy on Infant’s Birth Weight in Rural Bangladesh

Table 1

Baseline characteristics of the participants with complete and incomplete information.

Characteristic	Complete data 𝑁=2175	Incomplete data 𝑁=2261	𝑃 value^†
Age (years)
Mean age (SD)	26±5.89	25.60±6.05	0.028
≤18	195 (9.0)	253 (11.3)	0.040
19–34	1776 (81.7)	1784 (79.4)
≥35	204 (9.4)	210 (9.3)
Parity
0	681 (31.3)	819 (36.4)	0.005
1-2	1087 (50)	1034 (46.0)
3-4	335 (15.4)	324 (14.4)
≥5	70 (3.2)	71 (3.2)
Height (cm)
Mean ht. (SD)	149.74±5.34	149.79±5.31	0.732
Weight (kg)
Mean wt. (SD)	45.28±6.74	45.47±7.08	0.361
BMI (kg/m^2)
≤18.49	596 (27.4)	620 (27.5)	0.757
18.50–24.99	1454 (66.9)	1493 (66.3)
≥25	123 (5.7)	139 (6.2)
Mean (SD)	20.17±2.64	20.23±2.73	0.464
Women education (y)
0	674 (31.0)	755 (33.4)	0.025
1–5	500 (23.0)	448 (19.8)
>5	1001 (46.0)	1058 (46.8)
Mean (SD)	5±4.04	5.04±4.23	0.800
Lives with mother-in law
No	956 (44.1)	937 (41.6)	0.085
Yes	1210 (55.9)	1317 (58.4)
Husband education (y)
0	670 (31.0)	676 (30.1)	0.655
1–5	510 (23.6)	519 (23.1)
>5	982 (45.4)	1051 (46.8)
Mean (SD)	5.37±4.54	5.54±4.65	0.239
A stable household of income
No	1247 (57.3)	1183 (52.3)	0.001
Yes	928 (42.7)	1078 (47.7)
Household income and expenditure situation in last year
Surplus	564 (26.0)	635 (28.2)	0.205
Expenditure equaled income	1171 (54.0)	1200 (53.2)
Occasional deficit	376 (17.3)	351 (15.6)
Constant deficit	58 (2.7)	68 (3.0)
Calculated asset scores
Poor	414 (19.0)	474 (21.0)	0.404
Below middle	454 (20.9)	437 (19.3)
Middle	425 (19.5)	458 (20.3)
Upper middle	442 (20.3)	445 (19.7)
Rich	440 (20.2)	447 (19.8)
Birth weight (g)
<2500	646 (29.7)	351 (32.1)	0.153
≥2500	1529 (70.3)	741 (67.9)
Mean (SD)	2704.72±407.90	2672.33±415.01	0.033

†Differences assessed with independent 𝑡-test for continuous variables and with Pearson’s chi-square tests for categorical variables. Bold font refers to statistical significance.