ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1560455
Women's educational attainment, full-time farming and household dietary quality in rural China
Provisionally accepted
- Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China
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Diet serves as the primary source of nutrition, and dietary quality determines individuals' nutritional status. Poor dietary quality may result in malnutrition such as undernutrition and overnutrition. This study examines the association between women's educational attainment and rural household dietary quality and the heterogeneity in this association when accounting for the employment status of male and female household heads.We use dietary intake data for 2069 households from the first round of China Rural Revitalization Survey (2020) and conceptualize dietary quality using the Diet Balance Index (DBI). Multiple linear regression indicates that a one-standard-deviation increase in women's years of education reduces dietary imbalance by 3.65%, overconsumption by 6.51%, and underconsumption by 2.09%. Specifically, higher education attainment is associated with less inadequate consumption of milk and fish and more balanced meat intake in rural households. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the positive effect of women's education on dietary quality is stronger when women engage in on-farm employment, while it is more pronounced in households where men are employed in off-farm work. The findings of this research provide theoretical support for improving the nutritional status of rural residents in China and other developing regions by allocating more educational resources and enhancing access to education for rural women.
Keywords: Women's educational attainment, Dietary quality, Full-time farming, Diet balance index, China food pagoda
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 14 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Ye and Han. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rong Li, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, Nanjing, China
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