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Maternal education in relation to early and late child health outcomes: Findings from a Brazilian cohort study

Author

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  • Victoria, Cesar G.
  • Huttly, Sharon R. A.
  • Barros, Fernando C.
  • Lombardi, Cintia
  • Vaughan, J. Patrick

Abstract

In a population-based cohort of approximately 6000 Brazilian children, the associations between maternal education and a number of child health outcomes were studied while controlling for potentially confounding variables such as family income and education of the husband. In the crude analyses, maternal education was associated with perinatal and infant mortality, hospital admissions in the first 20 months of life and the three nutritional indicators (length-for-age, weight-for-age and weight-for-length) at mean age 20 months. After adjustment for confounding, the apparent associations with outcomes in early infancy--birthweight and perinatal mortality--were no longer present, while that with infant mortality persisted despite being reduced. Strong associations remained with later outcomes including hospital admissions, length-for-age and weight-for-age at mean age 20 months. Among infants born to women with little or no schooling, deaths due to diarrhoea, pneumonia and other infectious diseases were particularly common. These findings support the hypothesis that maternal education has an effect on child health which is partly independent from that of other socioeconomic factors; they also suggest that maternal care is more important than the biological characteristics of the mothers since stronger effects were observed for the late (postneonatal mortality, hospital admissions and nutritional status) than for the early (birthweight, perinatal mortality) outcomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Victoria, Cesar G. & Huttly, Sharon R. A. & Barros, Fernando C. & Lombardi, Cintia & Vaughan, J. Patrick, 1992. "Maternal education in relation to early and late child health outcomes: Findings from a Brazilian cohort study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(8), pages 899-905, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:34:y:1992:i:8:p:899-905
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    Cited by:

    1. Hakobyan, Mihran & Yepiskoposyan, Levon, 2010. "Infant mortality decline in Armenia: Why with uneven rates?," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 134-137, March.
    2. Barry J. Milne & Roy Lay-Yee & Jessica M. Mc Lay & Janet Pearson & Martin von Randow & Peter Davis, 2015. "Modelling the Early life-course (MELC): A Microsimulation Model of Child Development in New Zealand," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 8(2), pages 28-60.
    3. Regina Fuchs & Elsie Pamuk & Wolfgang Lutz, 2010. "Education or wealth: which matters more for reducing child mortality in developing countries?," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 8(1), pages 175-199.
    4. Escobal, Javier & Saavedra, Jaime & Suárez, Pablo, 2005. "The Interaction of Public Assets, Private Assets and Community Characteristics and its Effect on Early Childhood Height-for-Age in Peru," MPRA Paper 56478, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Deniz Karaoglan & Serap Sagir & Meltem Dayioglu & Durdane Sirin Saracoglu, 2023. "The Impact Of Maternal Education On Early Childhood Development: The Case Of Turkey," ERC Working Papers 2303, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Jul 2023.
    6. Deniz Karaoglan & Serap Sagir & Meltem Dayioglu & Durdane Sirin Saracoglu, 2023. "The Impact of Maternal Education on Early Childhood Development: The Case of Turkey," Working Papers 2023-02, Gebze Technical University, Department of Economics.

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