The Role of Maternal Literacy in Reducing the Risk of Child Malnutrition in India

Vani Borooah

ICER Working Papers from ICER - International Centre for Economic Research

Abstract: This study uses unit-record data on over 50,000 rural children, from the sixteen major states of India, to analyse the determinants of the risks of severe stunting and of being severely underweight. The importance of this study derives from the fact that the prevalence of under-nourishment in India is, even relative to other poor countries, shockingly high. The study focuses on the role of maternal literacy in reducing the risk of child malnourishment. It concludes that when the mother is literate, real benefits flow to children in terms of reduced risk; the same benefits, however, do not flow when the father, but not the mother, is literate. Literate mothers make more effective use of health-care institutions, like anganwadis and hospitals. Consequently, the benefits to children from expanding the supply of such institutions are greater when these institutions interact with mothers who are literate.

Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2002-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.bemservizi.unito.it/repec/icr/wp2002/borooah31-02.pdf (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:icr:wpicer:31-2002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ICER Working Papers from ICER - International Centre for Economic Research Corso Unione Sovietica, 218bis - 10134 Torino - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Daniele Pennesi ().