Examining the Mechanisms by which Women's Agency Affects Environmental Health: A Structural Equations Modeling Approach (thesis)

Abstract

Though previous authors have consistently reported a positive relationship between women's agency and environmental health, a causal relationship between the two variables has yet to be identified due to the confounding variable of progressive values. This paper uses a structural equation modeling framework to control for progressive values and draw inferences about the relationship between women's agency and environmental health in a society. Using data from 194 countries, I exploit a combination of Maximum Likelihood and Full-Information Maximum Likelihood models to analyze the pathways through which the latent confounder of progressive values in a society influences both environmental health and women's agency. By predicting and accounting for these relationships, I demonstrate that the relationship between overall women's political empowerment and environmental health is statistically significant and may be causal. Furthermore, I show that while the percentage of women in parliament specifically appears to drive environmental health among UN-designated developed countries, this relationship is not statistically significant among developing and transitioning countries. The results of this analysis provide a more complex understanding of the factors impacting environmental health and suggest that increasing women's political agency is a promising approach to combatting global climate change.