The Effect of Education on Global Health

This recent Washington Post article details the effect that a mother’s education level has on her child’s health. The article claims that an increase in women’s education indirectly leads to improved care for children because mothers are more likely to take their children to health clinics when sick and they are more aware of treatments and disease prevention methods. Increased schooling of women also results in these women having fewer children and children who are more widely spaced in age. The effects of women’s education have been seen in poor and wealthy countries alike and show that investments in education seem to be just as important as direct investments in health care. Here the author discusses the magnitude of the results:

Half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be attributed to the better education of women, according to the analysis published in the journal Lancet. For every one-year increase in the average education of reproductive-age women, a country experienced a 9.5 percent decrease in the child deaths.

This article provides further evidence that education has many positive externalities in consumption, something that economists have long been saying. A young girl can have a positive effect on the future of her family and the world by obtaining an education. Of course, the article does not provide a “threshold” level of education at which the biggest effects may be seen and in poorer countries, where the benefits of increased education would presumably be highest, obtaining even low levels of education is surely difficult. One final point from this article is that developing countries have options to improve their health prospects aside from simply investing in medical resources. The positive effect of education shows that investment in other public goods like clean water and roads should also have a profound effect on global health.