How Does Mother's Education Affect Child Height?

TLDR

Many studies have demonstrated that parental education has a significant positive impact on child health. This paper attempts to identify the mechanisms through which maternal education affects child height conditional on age and sex. The 1986 Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey shows that nearly all of maternal education’s effect on child height is mediated by information access (reading, TV, radio), with semi‑literacy explaining part of the urban effect, interactions with community services revealing that education substitutes for health services but complements sewerage services, and only a small portion transmitted through income.

Abstract

Many studies have demonstrated that parental education has a significant positive impact on child health. This paper attempts to identify the mechanisms through which maternal education affects one indicator of child health-height conditional on age and sex. Using data from the 1986 Brazilian Demographic and Health Survey, it is shown that almost all the impact of maternal education can be explained by indicators of access to information-reading papers, watching television, and listening to the radio. In urban areas, whether the mother is semi-literate accounts for some of the education effect. There are also significant interactions between maternal education and the availability of community services indicating that education and health services are substitutes but education and the availability of sewerage services are complements. Very little of the maternal education effect is transmitted through income.