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Female education

Nutrition-sensitive interventions

Overall impact:     Medium

Impact: 

  Positive

Strength: 

  Medium

Additional years of schooling for women is associated with multiple health outcomes, including reduction in adolescent fertility.

Literature Review

Impact: 

  Positive

Strength: 

  Strong

 

Higher maternal education, or any education, was significantly associated with HAZ in 14 studies.1 2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12 13 14

At the same time, two studies showed no association between mothers’ education and childhood stunting. 15 16

Higher maternal education has been linked directly to improvements in childcare practices.17

Quantitative Analysis

Impact: 

  Mixed

Strength: 

  Medium

 

Based on the linear mixed effects regression, maternal schooling significantly influenced stunting prevalence in the expected for 2000-2016 period. While the p-value was extremely low (<0.0001), so was the effect size (0.03), suggesting a significant but small influence. Maternal schooling was not significant for the 2008-2016 period.

According to the decomposition analysis, maternal education was consistently one of the strongest predictors of HAZ across age groups, especially during 2007/2008-2016 period.

Qualitative Analysis

Impact: 

  Positive

Strength: 

  Medium

 

Not mentioned specifically.

Conclusion

Given the strong support provided by our quantitative analysis in addition to the large body of existing literature supporting this relationship, our study posits that improvements in maternal education over 2000 to 2016 (i.e., from an average of 8.0 years to 10.1 years among index mothers) have been pivotal to stunting gains in the country.

More years of maternal education is linked with delayed marriage and delayed pregnancy, thereby reducing the risk of adolescent pregnancy. If an adolescent girl becomes pregnant during her growth phase, her linear growth may be halted while her body prioritizes supplying available nutrients to the growing fetus; other risks of adolescent pregnancy include preterm and small for gestational age birth, both of which increase the likelihood of stunting in the child.

Along with delaying age of pregnancy, higher educational attainment can also empower women to access more health services for themselves, as well as for their children and family. Higher maternal education is linked to improvements in childcare practices, which are beneficial for health and nutrition.

Back to Analysis

  1. 1
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  2. 2
    Urke HB, Mittelmark MB, Valdivia M. Trends in stunting and overweight in Peruvian pre-schoolers from 1991 to 2011: Findings from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Public Health Nutr [Internet]. 2013;17:2407-18.
  3. 3
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