Education provides a Path to reduced child mortality

A comprehensive analysis has found that each year of parental education is associated with lower risks of childhood mortality. Published today in The Lancet, the study is the largest to date to examine the relationship between mothers' and fathers’ education and child mortality on a global scale.

A comprehensive analysis has found that each year of parental education is associated with lower risks of childhood mortality. Published today in The Lancet, the study is the largest to date to examine the relationship between mothers' and fathers’ education and child mortality on a global scale. Parental education and inequalities in child mortality: A global systematic review and meta-analysis was led by the Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research (CHAIN) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). 

Lower education of mothers and fathers was found to be a risk factor for mortality of children under the age of five. This finding holds even after controlling for wealth or income, parents’ partner’s years of schooling, and sex of the child. 

The meta-analysis found that each additional year of fathers’ and mothers’ schooling is linked to a reduction in under-5 mortality of 1.6% and 3.0% respectively. Over 12 years of a parent's education, these effects accumulate to a 17.3% decreased child mortality related to paternal education and a 31% decrease linked to maternal education. To visualise these findings, a factsheet capturing the most important findings of the study was produced by CHAIN and its partner EuroHealthNet. A video was also produced by NTNU.

“Further reductions in child mortality are needed and investments in education may be key to achieving this. It is time that education is put on to the international policy agenda as a global determinant of child survival", said CHAIN leader, Professor Terje Andreas Eikemo. 

The study is ground-breaking because it includes the under-examined effects of paternal education, and goes beyond examining the neonatal period to include six age intervals until the age of five. By including 300 studies in 92 countries, capturing over 3,000,000 live births, the review also exceeded previous studies in scale, geographic scope, and comprehensiveness. 

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