Causal Effects of Maternal Schooling on Child Immunization in India

Prabal De ()

A chapter in Human Capital and Health Behavior, 2017, vol. 25, pp 85-107 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: Child immunization is widely recognized as a cost-effective preventive medicine. Unfortunately, in India about 50% of the eligible children aged 12–23 months miss some essential vaccination. Though a positive association between maternal education and markers of child health like immunization has been long established, the literature has struggled to find a causal relationship, mainly because education is inextricably correlated with other socioeconomic variables like income. In this chapter, I propose a new instrument for women’s education in India using the following facts. First, due to lack of sanitary facilities in schools, particularly rural schools, large number of girls drop out of school once they reach puberty. Second, age at menarche is largely determined by biological factors and not social factors. Together, age at menarche can explain variations in schooling, yet be independent of outcome variables like child immunization. I find that additional years of maternal schooling (conditional on strictly positive years of schooling)doincrease the probability of complete immunization of children.

Keywords: Schooling; immunization; child health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 1-219920170000025003
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:aheszz:s0731-219920170000025003

DOI: 10.1108/S0731-219920170000025003

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().