Maternal education and the vicious cycle of high fertility and malnutrition: an analytic survey.

Working paper

It has long been recognised by observers of public health and population policy that the nutritional condition of individual mothers and children, and the fertility histories of individual women, are strongly associated with the position or status of those individuals in their society. It is now suggested that changes in status induce multiple, often mutually reinforcing changes in the determininats of welfare. This paper is in three sections. The first outlines the analytical framework and discusses its application to the problem of maternal and child welfare. The second reviews a selection of the literature on the links between education, fertility, nutrition and mortality. Fertility being prior to the formation of the dyad and hence to the analysis of its welfare, the evidence and theory of fertility determination is rather extensively examined. Fina lly, the third section, addresses the implications for both policy and research. Taking in turn the relevant policy options, the paper considers their relative merits from research to date, and identifies the major gaps in current knowledge which must qualify any ranking of policies.

Authors: Collier, P; Lockwood, M

• Publisher: World Bank
• Series: Policy Research Working Paper Series
• Publication date: 1988-01-01
• Language: English