Does maternal schooling lead to improvements in child health? Evidence from Ethiopia

Natalia Cantet

Education Economics, 2026, vol. 34, issue 3, 367-388

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of women’s education on child health by leveraging Ethiopia’s 1995 Universal Primary Education reform, which eliminated primary school fees. Using regional and temporal variation in implementation as a natural experiment, I conduct a Two-Stage Least Squares analysis to estimate the effect of women’s schooling on their children’s health. Results show that children of women who gained more education due to the reform have better long-term health: they are 0.08 percentage points less likely to be chronically malnourished and have height-for-age Z-scores higher by 0.163 standard deviations.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1080/09645292.2025.2518368

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