The effects of mothers’ education on the nutritional outcomes of their children in Nicaragua

Abstract

Using data from the 2001 Nicaragua Demographic and Health Survey, this paper examines the relationship of a child’s nutritional health outcomes relative to the completion of secondary education of their mother by measuring her child’s height-for-age and weight-for-height. This study focuses on Nicaragua in particular, in contrast to other literature surveying Latin America as a whole. The persistence of malnutrition amongst the population makes Nicaragua a candidate for research in this area, especially in face of educational reforms in the country approximately 10 years prior. In this study the control variables include paternal education, geographic location, socioeconomic status, birth order, and household size; combined to help attenuate the effects of maternal education. The analysis is subdivided to examine the relation of mothers’ education to health outcomes for children of each gender. It was found that maternal secondary education is significant for all scenarios with the exception of gender-separated weight-for-height, and that there is a stronger correlation between health outcomes for girls than for boys when examining maternal education.