Abstract
This paper explores the association between changes in mother’s relative educational status and changes in early childhood nutrition focusing on the case of Malawi and the sizable improvements in early childhood height-for-age z scores (HAZ) that occurred between 2000 and 2015. Using Demographic Health Survey data, the paper shows that there were changes in the composition of mothers with higher relative educational status in the population, and also changes in returns to mother’s higher relative educational status between 2000 and 2015. A Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition suggests that improved returns to mother’s higher relative educational status were associated with playing an important role in improvements in early childhood HAZ between 2000 and 2015, although compositional changes in mothers with higher relative education appear to be less important. Supplementary descriptive analyses suggest these results might have to do with changes in selection into non-hypergamous unions over time.
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Source Demographic Health Surveys 2000 and 2015
Source Demographic Health Surveys 2000 and 2015
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Notes
Following standard DHS protocol, the survey weights provided by DHS are transformed by dividing by 1,000,000.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Jere Behrman, Siwei Cheng, Paula England, Mike Hout, Luca Pesando, Florencia Torche, Abigail Weitzman, and Larry Wu for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.
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Appendix
Appendix
See Figs. 3 and 4, Tables 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Source Demographic Health Surveys 1992, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2015
% Hypergamous by cohort of marriage. Analysis conducted at woman level using DHS sample of partnered women. Weighted using transformed versions of survey weights provided by DHS.
Source Demographic Health Surveys 1992, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2015
Years of school by cohort of marriage for husbands and wives. Analysis conducted at woman level using DHS sample of partnered women. Weighted using transformed versions of survey weights provided by DHS.
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Behrman, J.A. Mother’s Relative Educational Status and Early Childhood Height-for-Age z Scores: A Decomposition of Change Over Time. Popul Res Policy Rev 39, 147–173 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09523-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-019-09523-4