Mother’s Education and Children’s Nutritional Status: New Evidence from Cambodia

Abstract

This study uses data from Cambodia’s 2005 Demographic and Health Survey to examine how three measures of children’s nutritional status vary by mother’s educational attainment. To identify mechanisms for that association, the study analyzes birth size, which depends on factors during gestation, and low height-for-age (stunting) and low weight-for-height (wasting), which are affected by factors that operate after birth. In multivariate specifications that control for socioeconomic status, mother’s education is strongly inversely associated with stunting, but not small birth size or wasting. Addition of household composition and environmental factors to the model reduces the association between mother’s education and child nutritional outcomes only slightly.