Parental education and child health: Intracountry evidence

Abstract

This paper examines a wide range of evidence on the relationship between parental education and child health. Ideally, measures of child nutritional status, morbidity and mortality would have been included, but very few studies on morbidity were found which included education. The data reviewed here indicate that maternal education is closely related to child health measured either by nutritional status or by infant and child mortality. The effect of father's education on infant and child mortality appears to be about one half that of mother's education.

The exact mechanisms through which education acts to affect child health are unclear. Better nutrition among the children of the more educated has been well-documented here, but it is unclear to what extent these effects result from improved knowledge and to what extent from higher income. The analysis does suggest that income differences cannot explain all the effect or perhaps even as much as half.