Aren’t You Glad Your Ma Went to School? The Linkages between Maternal Education and Childhood Immunization

Kriti Vikram, University of Maryland
Sonalde B. Desai, University of Maryland
Reeve Vanneman, University of Maryland

While the correlations between parental education and child health have been observed to be moderate to strong in diverse parts of the world, the causal pathways remain far from clear. The proposed paper seeks to examine the possible pathways that mediate between maternal education and childhood immunization. We argue that acquisition of education leads to better human, social and cultural capitals among the mothers. This is then reflected in better immunization status for their children. Additionally, we seek to test whether higher education of the mother is associated with greater physical and decision-making autonomy for her within the household, which leads to better health outcomes for the child. We use the India Human Development Survey 2005, which is a nationally representative survey, rich in detailed measures of each pathway which we hope to explore in this paper.