The role of maternal education in child health evidence from china​

UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE ROLE OF MATERNAL EDUCATION IN CHILD HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA BY NGUYEN THI HONG CAM MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2017 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS THE ROLE OF MATERNAL EDUCATION IN CHILD HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By NGUYEN THI HONG CAM Academic Supervisor: VO TAT THANG HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2017 DECLARATION “I certify the content of this dissertation has not already been submitted for any degree and is not being currently submitted for any other degrees I certify that, to the best of my knowledge, any help received in preparing this dissertation and all source used, have been acknowledged in this dissertation.” Signature Nguyen Thi Hong Cam Date: January, 2018 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr Vo Tat Thang, for his patience, motivation, enthusiasm, sympathy, immense knowledge, and for giving me valuable advice His guidance helped me at all the time of research and writing of this thesis In addition, I would like to thank Prof Nguyen Trong Hoai, Dr Pham Khanh Nam and Dr Nguyen Luu Bao Doan who have their expertise view with me, the valuable experience in research, and Dr Truong Dang Thuy who has provided the practical econometric technique, a valuable knowledge in research Furthermore, I would also like to thank all lecturers and staff at the Vietnam Netherlands Program who already supported me wholeheartedly during my studying time in there In particular, I would like to express my gratitude and affection towards my family for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study My sincere thanks to all members in K22, who always devotes all love and all the best interest for me I am grateful for my best friends in encouraging me to start the thesis, persevere with it and finally to complete it They always beside by me during difficult moment and sharing ups and downs with me and making my burdens lighter Finally, I take this opportunity to express gratitude to Dr Bach Nguyen I am extremely thankful and indebted to him for sharing expertise, and sincere and valuable guidance and encouragement extended to me ii ABSTRACT Children healthcare and gender discrimination are a real challenge to China in the process of achieving its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) In this study, we investigate the influence of mothers’ education on the health status of their children in the context of China The data are derived from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) which comprises information from 16,000 households and individuals collected from 25 provinces across China except for autonomous zones The result shows that maternal education strength affects children’s health, and household wealth as well as gender and living area slightly impact on child health The study is one of the first research to estimate the influence of maternal education on child health by quantile regression while the historical papers used OLS or fixed effect to research those influences Quantile regression is employed to analyze the impacts of mothers’ education on child health under different quantiles of the child’s body index variable JEL classification: I14, I24 Keywords: Child health, maternal education, household wealth, BMI, China iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research problem 1.2 Research objective 10 1.3 Scope of the study 11 1.4 Contributions 11 1.5 Thesis structure 11 CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 12 2.1 Theoretical background 12 2.2 Empirical reviews 15 2.2.1 The impact of maternal education on child health 15 2.2.2 The role of household wealth 19 2.2.3 The effect of development economic on health 20 2.3 Summary CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY and 21 DATA RESOURCES 22 3.1 Analytical framework 22 3.2 Econometric models 23 3.3 The constructed model 25 3.4 Data descriptions 28 3.4.1 The background of data set 28 3.4.2 Characteristics 28 3.4.3 Core module 29 iv 3.4.4 Process CHAPTER EMPIRICAL RESULTS 29 31 4.1 Data description 31 4.2 Empirical results 33 4.2.1 Maternal education 33 4.2.2 Household wealth 34 4.2.3 Gender and living area 34 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS 41 5.1 Conclusions 41 5.2 Policy implications 42 5.3 Limits of the study 42 REFERENCES 44 APPENDIX 47 List of variables using in data set 47 v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Descriptive variables 32 Table 2: Correlation within variables 35 Table 3: OLS estimates of determinants of child weight and height 37 Table 4: Quantile regression for Child Weight and Height 38 Table 5:Simultaneous quantile regression results of Child BMI 39 Table 6:Simultaneous quantile regression of child weight for age on all covariates 40 Table 7: Quantile regression for Child BMI 48 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological systems theory 12 Figure 2: The linkage between maternal education and child health (UNICEF, 1998) 22 vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Research problem Nowadays, improving women and children healthcare is the goal of development for global economies In assessing the level of children development, the health of child is used as a major indicator for child development (WHO, 2004), thus indirectly imposing child health as a key factor to determine the level of economic development Women education plays an important role in child health, especially in developing countries Caldwell (1979) supported that maternal education is the most crucial factor in different child health outcomes The recent trend in governmental policy making is to use resources (generated by economic development) to invest in education When the level of education is improved, parental care-giving is advanced which shall indirectly lead to an improvement in child health However, education is not the only factor impacting parenting and child health Child health is affected by other determinants such as paternal education, health service availability, and socioeconomic status (Trussell et al 1983 and Edmonston et al., 1983) (Dong et al., 2010) indicated that the relation between economic growth and household wealth is positive, thus implying that the maternal health and parental care-giving can be improved through resources and services It can be concluded that wealth production is the pathway through which economic development can leave positive effect on parental care-giving and child health Developing countries tend to have a concave association between child health and household wealth Evidences from developing countries have shown that household wealth and child health tend to have a concave association since the diminishing returns to life expectancy is linked to the growth of income (Belli et al., 2002) Both household wealth and maternal education are the pathways for economic development process and child health benefits (Stewart et al., 2000) Furthermore, many of these strategies are interdependent so researchers can analyze the influence of child carefully, making their child overweight, that is the reason child’s BMI is reduced As the same thing, residents in the urban areas are associated with the child weight and height, meaning children would be overweight, it leads to BMI of children decreasing The male children are more well taken care of than the girls The age of child determines children health, ceteris paribus Therefore, age of children and gender of children positive related to children health Children health are better if they are being in higher household income group because their household wealth may be better than others There are several differences between the various groups from Table When estimated separately, the quantile regression presents the results for the three children’s BMI groups, respectively The relation between gender of child and child health are the same as the results of OLS regression Furthermore, the variables representing the BMI of mother retain their strong significance throughout all models When the rise in the maternal education at the first quantile, the child’s BMI is increased slightly The other two groups exhibit more difference to the earlier results, the maternal education impacts BMI of child negatively Table 2: Correlation within variables 35 BMI of children Father_BMI Mother_BMI Weight of children 0.02 -0.17 -0.01 -0.60 Father_weight 0.08 0.00 0.15 0.00 Mother_weight Father_height Mother_height father_education mother_education Urban Water Fuel electricity restroom trash child age child age_squared child_sex (male) netfamincome netfamincomepc time_father time_mother Height of children -0.05 0.00 -0.06 0.00 -0.09 0.00 0.01 -0.29 -0.05 0.00 0.01 -0.61 0.08 0.00 0.00 -0.95 -0.10 0.00 -0.08 0.00 0.03 -0.01 -0.04 -0.01 -0.05 0.00 0.01 -0.54 0.00 -0.72 -0.07 0.00 -0.12 0.00 0.06 0.00 -0.01 -0.30 0.03 -0.05 0.08 0.00 -0.02 -0.15 -0.01 -0.38 0.86 0.00 0.85 0.00 0.06 0.00 -0.02 -0.10 0.04 -0.01 0.01 -0.55 0.08 0.00 -0.06 0.00 -0.01 -0.50 -0.08 0.00 -0.12 0.00 0.09 0.00 -0.01 -0.43 0.04 0.00 0.06 0.00 -0.04 0.00 -0.02 -0.23 0.90 0.00 0.85 0.00 0.02 -0.06 -0.01 -0.52 0.05 0.00 0.00 -0.88 0.06 0.00 36 Table 3: OLS estimates of determinants of child weight and height VARIABLES Father_weight Mother_weight father_education mother_education urban water fuel electricity restroom trash child age child age_squared child_sex (male) netfamincome netfamincomepc time_father time_mother Weight of children 1.133*** -0.01 1.153*** -0.01 1.925*** -0.42 2.155*** -0.48 -0.58 0.90 -0.08 0.92 -0.09 5.107*** -1.83 0.99 -0.02 1.01 -0.02 23.75*** -4.04 1.179*** -0.01 36.07*** -14.68 1.00 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.671*** -0.08 1.09 -0.17 Height of children 1.673*** -0.33 3.518*** -0.70 11*** -4.52 0.99 -0.04 1.123* -0.08 1.786* -0.60 0.940*** -0.02 1.01 -0.02 6,976*** -1,072.00 0.871*** -0.01 3.930*** -1.46 1.000** 0.00 1.000** 0.00 1.09 -0.14 0.83 -0.12 Father_BMI Mother_BMI Father_height Mother_height Observations R-squared 4,583 0.78 1.312*** -0.05 1.238*** -0.05 4,444 0.85 Robust standard errors in parentheses *** p