Educating women = healthier children?

What is the best way to improve the health of a nation's children? Community healthcare facilities, water supplies and sewerage systems are traditional targets for public investment. Peru's experience suggests that improving women's education is just as important.

Carlos Jesus is an eight year old, living in the Andean town of Huaraz in western Peru. His mother usually helps him with his homework in the evenings. His father is a teacher and works a long way from Huaraz coming home only at weekends. (Photo by: Paolo Aguilar/Young Lives)

Peru has the second highest malnutrition rate in South America. Stunted growth resulting from chronic nutritional deficiency and leading to diminished intellectual capacity is common among children, particularly those from rural areas. There has been large investment in primary healthcare facilities over the last ten years, in an attempt to solve the problem. But usage of these facilities is low.

Better education for women could be the solution, according to research from the Young Lives project in Peru. The project found that over 25 percent of children aged between 6 and 18 months were stunted and chronically malnourished and that this was more prevalent among rural children. Mothers living in rural areas have an average of four years schooling compared to nine years if they live in urban areas. This implies that a mother's educational level directly affects a child's nutritional status. The more educated the mother is, the healthier the child (see figure below). In areas with many educated mothers, the entire community's health improves because the mothers share health advice and information. In households where mothers are less educated improved public services, such as sewerage facilities, improve child health.

The effects of mother’s education on children’s
nutritional status in Peru - click to enlarge

Policymakers concerned with improving child health should invest in:

• long-term programmes that aim to reduce education gaps and improve the average schooling level of Peruvian women
• nutrition related training programmes for uneducated and under-educated rural women, to improve children's health in the short term
• improving public facilities, such as sewerage facilities and road networks, in areas where low-educated mothers are concentrated.

Javier Escobal
Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE)
Av. del EjŽrcito # 1870, P.O. Box 18-0572
Lima 27
Peru
T +51 (0)1 264 1780; +51(0)1 264 1882
jescobal@grade.org.pe

See also

On how the interaction of public assets, private assets and community characteristics affect height-for-age early childhood in Peru, by J. Escobal, et al., 2005 www.savethechildren.org.uk/younglives/data/publications/index.htm

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