Female self-employment and health performance in sub-Saharan Africa

The study investigates how female self-employment is linked to female health performance, measured by the risk of maternal death and female life expectancy in 43 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The quantile regression estimation technique is employed as the empirical strategy in order to assess the linkages throughout the conditional distribution of health performance dynamics. The findings show that female self-employment is negatively related to the risk of maternal death throughout the conditional distribution of the risk of maternal death while there is a negative nexus between female self-employment and life expectancy throughout the conditional distribution of life expectancy. The negative response of the risk of maternal death to female self-employment broadly increases with increasing levels of the risk of maternal death, while the negative response of female life expectancy to female self-employment is an increasing function of female life expectancy. Policy implications are discussed.