Things Aren’t Always What They Seem: Revisiting the Relationship Between Women’s Education and Infant Mortality

• In Event: 4251 - Section on Sociology of Development Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 3: Gender and Development

Abstract

The connection between maternal education and child mortality is one of the most consistent and most powerful relationships established in public health. However, most previous literature is based on the assumption that the relationship is uniform across countries. We use quantile regression analysis to revisit the education-health link across 153 countries from 1970-2016. This technique allows for the possibility that the relationship between women’s education and infant mortality varies, depending on observed mortality rates. Indeed, results show that the expected benefits of women’s education are predominantly concentrated among countries at the relatively low end of the distribution of infant mortality (20th to 35th percentile). There is no relationship between education and mortality below the 20th percentile or between the 35th to 70th percentiles. More theoretically significant (and puzzling), women’s education is associated with worse health outcomes where mortality rates are high (75th to 90th percentiles). These findings provide a more nuanced picture of the relationship between education and mortality, and they suggest that women’s education is not a guaranteed solution to global health inequalities.

Authors

• Kristen Shorette, Stony Brook University

• Rebekah Burroway, Stony Brook University