How important is parental education for child nutrition?

Alderman & Headey (2017) conducted a novel econometric analysis of 376,992 preschool children from 56 developing countries, to find out how influential parental education is for the child’s nutrition. Mothers appeared to affect nutritional returns to a greater extent than fathers, although the effects may be minimal for primary education. As the household wealth increased, as did the nutritional returns to parental education. Better outcomes were observed in countries or regions with higher burdens of undernutrition and those with higher schooling quality. But the results with regards to nutrition were highly variable across country sub-samples. Education may produce uncertain and variable results, while the very ambitious education targets may only lead to modest reductions in stunting rates in high-burden countries. Alderman & Headey think that education might have greater influence over the nutritional status of the next generation if the school curriculum worked on enhancing the health and nutritional knowledge of future parents. [NPID: parents, children, family, family relationships, parenting, parental education, school quality, malnourished, school curriculum]

Year: 2017

Reference: Alderman, H., & Headey, D. D. (2017). How Important is Parental Education for Child Nutrition?. World development, 94, 448–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.02.007

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