Child Height and Maternal Health Care Knowledge in Mozambique

Katleen Van den Broeck

No 07-30, Discussion Papers from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics

Abstract: Stunting prevalence rates in Mozambique are very high (41 percent), especially in rural areas (46 percent). Recent research shows that consumption growth alone will not be sufficient to solve the problem of malnutrition. To investigate the role of additional determinants I use a two-stage quantile regression approach with specific attention to the role of maternal preventive health care knowledge and schooling. Three different scores for health care knowledge are used and show similar results. For rural Mozambique, I find that maternal schooling has positive effects especially in the top quintile of the height-for-age distribution while health care knowledge has a positive effect on height-for-age of under two year old children especially at the lower end of the distribution where the severely stunted children are located. Improving health care knowledge of mothers could substitute for the low levels of education and community health care facilities in rural areas and positively affect the height of the most severely stunted children.

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-knm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kuiedp:0730

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