S: Maternal education and child health: is there a strong causal relationship? Demography

Using data from the first round of Demographic and Health Surveys for 22 developing countries, we examine the effect of ma-ternal education on three markers of child health: infant mortality, children s height-for-age, and immunization status. In contrast to other studies, we argue that although there is a strong correlation between maternal education and markers of child health, a causal relationship is far from established. Education acts as a proxy for the socioeconomic status of the family and geographic area ofresi-dence. Introducing controls for husbands education and access to piped water and toilet attenuate the impact of maternal education on infant mortality and children s height-for-age. This effect is fur-ther reduced by controllingfor area of residence through the use of fixed-effects models. In the final model, maternal education has a statistically significant impact on infant mortality and height-for-age in only a handful of countries. In contrast, maternal educatio