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Title: The Effect of Maternal Education on Child Health
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Lillard, Dean R.
Simon, Kosali Ilayperuma
Ueyama, Maki
The Effect of Maternal Education on Child Health
Presented: Chicago, IL, American Economic Association Annual Meetings, January 5-7, 2007.
Also: http://www.aeaweb.org/annual_mtg_papers/2007/0105_1015_1804.pdf
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: American Economic Association
Keyword(s): Age at School Entry; Child Health; Children, Illness; Geocoded Data; Illnesses; Mothers, Education; Obesity; State-Level Data/Policy; Variables, Instrumental; Weight

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

We use an IV approach to examine the causal effect of mother's high school education on child health using the 1979-2002 waves of the NLSY79 and the 1990-2002 waves of the NLSY79CY. We instrument education with a rich set of education policy variables. We find that mothers who complete high school are more likely to report their child was ill enough to need a doctor, that their child was ill more times, and that their child was more likely to have fractured or dislocated a bone in the past 12 months that required medical attention or treatment. Across samples of mothers who dropped out of high school and who completed high school, we find no difference in the date of their children's last routine health checkup, percentiles for weight-for-age, height-for-age, BMI-for-age, or in the probability of children at risk of overweight and of being overweight. When we examined the possible mechanisms, we found that mother's high school education increases mother's age at child's birth, health insurance coverage and child care use. We also find suggestive evidence of a much more complex set of behaviors that are causally related to education (child care use, health insurance status, fertility decisions) and that likely affect child health. This preliminary evidence suggests that much more work needs to be done before one can strongly conclude that child health does or does not systematically vary with differences in maternal education on the margin we study.
Bibliography Citation
Lillard, Dean R., Kosali Ilayperuma Simon and Maki Ueyama. "The Effect of Maternal Education on Child Health." Presented: Chicago, IL, American Economic Association Annual Meetings, January 5-7, 2007.