Mon., Oct. 28, 2024: Staff Seminar “Maternal Education and Child Nutritional Outcomes in Kenya: Causal Insights from the 1985 Educational Reform” (online) [finished]

We regularly hold Staff Seminars for research presentations and information exchanges among AGI Researchers.

*This seminar will be online and free of charge.

*Please refer to the following for details.

Date and Time

Monday, October 28, 2024 from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
*A question-and-answer session is scheduled at the end of the presentation.

Presenter

Dr. Thu Hang NGUYEN Phung, Assistant Professor, AGI

Title

Maternal Education and Child Nutritional Outcomes in Kenya: Causal Insights from the 1985 Educational Reform

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of maternal education on children’s nutritional outcomes in Kenya, drawing on six waves of nationally representative data from the Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys (KDHS). To address potential endogeneity and establish a causal link, the study uses the 1985 educational reform as an instrumental variable. The main findings are as follows: first, women affected by the reform increased their education by an average of 1.8 years. Second, each additional year of maternal education is associated with a reduction in the probability of stunting, underweight, and wasting in children by approximately 3.8, 2.6, and 1.2 percentage points, respectively. These results hold up under a range of robustness tests. Lastly, the study explores various mechanisms driving these outcomes, including changes in fertility rates, female labor force participation, access to information, and women’s roles in decision-making.