Interaction of Household Wealth and Women’s Working Status on Child Malnutrition: Evidence from PDHS-2013

Theoretically, it is supposed that women’s working status and household wealth independently contribute towards the children’s dietary status. The working women of the inferior socio-economic class are generally engaged in the informal sector or low paid work. It may be argued that such kinds of service cannot contribute to the nutritious prestige in children. To solve this puzzle whether woman's working status in all socio-economic setups is contributing to children’s nutritional status or not? This is the main focus of the research. A sample data of 1169 households from PDHS (2012-13) are used to explore the influencing factors of child malnutrition. The study employed the binary logistic regression which observes the likelihood of malnutrition in the children. Malnutrition is measured through CIAF. The interaction terms of the woman’s working status and five quintiles of wealth index have been created. The results disclose that working women belonging to the household of the first two quintiles of the wealth index and the fourth quintile of the wealth index are not contributing to the nutritious prestige of the children. Furthermore, in the third quintiles, the working status of women contributes to the nutritional prestige of children. It may be inferred that the socioeconomic status of the household is important for the nutritional welfare of the children, not the woman's employment. However, it may be concluded that women’s employment should be of the level that can support the socio-economic status of the household.

Islamic Economics System and its Managerial Principles

The desire of Muslim economists to have a distinct discipline by establishing this all-encompassing term ‘Islamic economics’ and a system based on the injunctions of Islam to be rightly called Islamic Economic System started off almost five decades ago. This generic qualitative study is an effort to investigate into topical development and the current state of Islamic economic system as an alternate paradigm. The contention of this thesis is to seek answers as to why this viable third alternative of Islamic economics had been ineffective to leave a long-lasting mark in the scholastic circles and most importantly why the paradigmatic shift has not happened for this nascent discipline? For this reason, semi-structured face-to-face and email interviews from a panel of experts both in Islamic and mainstream economics, Islamic theologians, Islamic scholars and banking practitioners, as well as direct references from the two major sources that are Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) were taken. Based on the findings of Thematic Analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006) of this study, this alternate paradigm is a frontrunner in the attempts toward establishing a moral and social economy. Although a lot of efforts are being made towards its application, yet it still fails to attract a large audience and claimed gaps between theoretical construct and real activities seem to suggest otherwise and support this claim made by its opponents that it is no more than a utopian state that tends to challenge the viability of the Islamic economy idea. The study reveals that the stagnation in Islamic economics as a distinct discipline is caused by the scholarly world focusing on peripheral issues rather than shifting their focus on making some serious attempts to address the core aspects of modern economics. This alternative paradigm needs to re-adjust its focus and the Islamic scholars, Islamic and mainstream economists and academicians need to reintroduce Ijtihad, the study reveals the call for attention and strong emphasis on usul-al-ilm (to seek knowledge) primarily usul-al-iqtisad (to seek economics) that could provide solutions to our economic problems.