• Damian Clarke, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Administration and Economics of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, together with Sonia Bhalotra, Professor of Economics at the University of Essex, conducted a study that relates maternal mortality to education.

In 2015, the World Health Organization estimated that 830 women died every day at childbirth. These numbers could have been prevented with timely access to contraceptive methods and obstetric care, as a result of the policies established by the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The goal was to reduce maternal mortality by at least 75% over a 30-year-period. In spite of the progress in this field, the MDG was not achieved; therefore, implementing new policies is urgently required.

In view of this situation, Damian Clark, PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Administration and Economics of Universidad de Santiago, together with Sonia Bhalotra, Professor of Economics at the University of Essex, decided to study the reduction of maternal mortality caused by education. They conducted the study “Maternal mortality and Education,” in which they established an empirical relation between both factors.

The World Institute Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), in Helsinki, prepared a video that summarizes this important study in order to disseminate it worldwide through different media. 

UNU-WIDER is a unique blend of think tank, research institute, and UN agency that provides a range of services from policy advice to governments as well as freely available original research coordinated by a core group of resident and non-resident researchers and undertaken by a global network of collaborators.

The study

In the study, the researchers suggest that together with the typical policies of birth attendance, prenatal care and the status of health services, an increase in the level of education of women reduces the probability of dying at childbirth.

“Policy papers on maternal mortality rarely suggest the lack of education as a cause for maternal mortality. Academic and public policy literature has little to say about this issue. But in Economics, there is living literature that documents a positive correlation between education and other health indicators,” Clarke says.

They analyzed cases in countries like Kenya, Nepal and Cameroon and considering the question why education reduces maternal mortality? they found that women who have received education are more likely to avoid pregnancy complications like pre-eclampsia, bleeding and infections by adopting simple and low-cost practices to maintain hygiene, reacting to symptoms like bleeding or high blood pressure and having qualified birth attendance.

Besides, women with more education are more likely to use public health services, they have delivered their children at an older age (not during adolescence) and have had less children.

These results suggest that the levels of education attained by women in any country have significant effects on maternal mortality rates.

Translated by Marcela Contreras