Children’s linear growth and mother’s education in India: Do the pathways have a role to play?

Existing literature provides inconclusive evidence on the direct causal effects of mothers’ educational attainment in improving children’s health outcomes. However, several studies identify mechanisms such as information processing, health knowledge, bargaining power, and wealth effects by which a mother’s education can influence children’s health outcomes. This paper examines the impact of mothers’ health knowledge, bargaining power, and household wealth in determining the children’s long-term linear growth in India using the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) 2005–2006 household-level survey data. By employing instrumental variables (IV) and smoothed instrumental variables quantile regressions approach (SIVQR), the paper finds evidence that a mother’s health knowledge, bargaining power, and household wealth are plausible pathways by which a mother’s education influences children’s height-for-age (HAZ) outcomes in India. Specifically, the SIVQR results indicate that health knowledge strongly influences health outcomes, with the magnitude of the effects being positive and significant in the lowest and the highest quintiles. On the other hand, the results show a negative and significant impact on the bargaining power index in the upper quintile of the HAZ nutritional distribution. One plausible explanation for this result is that children in the upper quintiles are the healthiest; therefore, empowered mothers who experience a ‘power imbalance’ may negatively influence a child’s health. Furthermore, there is evidence of household wealth's distributional impact on children’s height increases across the HAZ nutritional distribution.