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.
PIP: A wide range of evidence on the relationship between parental education and child health is examined. The studies are first reviewed to determine the sign and significance of the relationship between education and nutritional status and then to see how these differ by sample characteristics. Subsequently, an attempt is made to determine the magnitude of education's effect. The findings of 16 studies that show the relationship between parental education and child nutritional status are summarized in a table. The studies are from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Most of the studies presented find the parental educational level to be positively associated with the nutritional status of their children. These findings are in contrast to the lack of association between parental education and child nutritional status found in more developed countries. 2 U.S. studies also failed to find a significant association between family income and any measure of nutritional status. Both studies concluded that in the populations studied genetic factors are more important than socioeconomic factors in determining child growth. The evidence reviewed gives fairly conclusive proof of a positive relationship between maternal education and child nutritional status, but the magnitude of the effect of education is underestimated if nutritional status is affected by education through any of those variables which were used as controls in the matched samples. The effect is overestimated to the extent that other variables are excluded which affect nutrition. Multivariate studies of the determinants of nutritional status give some insight into the relative importance of different channels through which education may have an effect, but there are relatively few studies of this type. Whether measured by nutritional status or infant and child mortality, this analysis has indicated that maternal education is closely related to child health. The evidence on the significance of the relationship is unequivocal, but the magnitude is more difficult to determine. Bivariate analysis of infant and child mortality indicates that, on the average, an additional year of education for a mother results in a reduction of 9/1000 in the mortality of her children. Multivariate analysis suggests that part of this effect results from the fact that better educated women tend to be married to better educated men. The exact mechanism through which education acts to affect child health is unclear. Better nutrition among the children of the more educated leads to improved survival, but it is unclear to what extent these effects result from improved knowledge or from higher income.