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 IMPACT OF MOTHER’S EDUCATION ON CHILD HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM MICS4 - VIETNAM A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirement for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By TRAN TRUNG THU Academic Supervisor: Dr. TRUONG DANG THUY HO CHI MINH CITY, December 2014 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I would like to declare that this thesis, titled “THE IMPACT OF MOTHER’S EDUCATION ON CHILDREN HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM MICS4 - VIETNAM”, is original, which is submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in Development Economic s to the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme. I ensure that this paper has not been submitted anywhere for the award of any degree. This thesis was completed with big support from my supervisor.
All source s of data and information have been fully cited in the thesis. TRAN TRUNG THU MDE19 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEGDEMENT First of all, I would like to express my greatest gratitude to my respectful supervisor, Dr. Truong Dang Thuy, for his valuable knowledge in helping me complete this study. I would like to express my thanks to him, who helped and supported me through interesting courses, especially his valuable advice, guidance and inspiration, which motivate me to finish this study.
I also want to express my thanks to all Professors of the MDE Programme during the past two years (2012 -2014), my friends from Class MDE 19, and administrative staffs of Economic Development Faculty, University of Economics HCMC (UEH), who provided me useful documents and materials. Finally, I would like to express my deeply appreciation to my dear family during the time I follow this grogram for their spiritual and physical supports. In particular, I dedicate this thesis to my mother, who has been helping me virtually during the process of conducting my thesis. HCMC, December 2014 TRAN TRUNG THU MDE 19 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT This study aims to examine the relationship between mother’s education and children health in Vietnam.
Data are taken from The Vietnam Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) by the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The main finding of this study in Vietnam is consistent with other studies in the world about mother’s education and children health. The result of this study in Vietnam showed that mother’s education is an important factor of the health of children. Thus, they can provide better environment such as provid ing safe water for their house and their children.
The result also provides new evidence to the general literature that flushing toilet does not really affect children health in Vietnam. 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Table of Contents DECLARATION. 4 LIST OF TABLES .3 Research scope and data .4 The structure of this study. 12 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.1 The relationship between mother’s education on child health .2 The impacts of all other factors.
20 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .1 Model and Data. 30 CHAPTER 4: EMPIRICAL RESULTS. 32 5 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.3 The regression results .2 Limitations and future research of the study. 50 6 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Variables of the study.
23 Table 2: Mean, Std., minimum and maximum from MICS abour HAZ z-score. 32 Table 3: Percent of HAZ z-score divided five parts. 33 Table 4: Percent of mother's education level. 33 Table 5: Percent of wealth index quintiles.
34 Table 6: Percent of households who use safe water and use flushing toilet. 34 Table 7: Mother's education and HAZ. 35 Table 8: Wealth index quintiles and HAZ. 36 Table 9: Variables of use safe water, mother's education and HAZ.
37 Table 10: Variables of use flushing toiler, mother's education and HAZ. 38 Table 11: Ordinary least squares estimates of the effect of mother's education on the health of children. 39 7 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Problem statement Child malnutrition is not only one of the key issues in the world but also especially pervasive in almost any low income nations and Vietnam because the poorest quintile of children usually has the highest ratio of malnutrition. What is malnutrition? When nutrients in meal are not enough or perhaps are too much, it can lead to malnutrition.
Children who suffer from malnutrition can have health problems such as a weakened immune system, infections, mental retardation, brain damage or even HIV/AIDS which lead to a high risk of developmental delay. Many children even can be at this damaged risk caused their mother don’t get proper nourishment. Even after recovering from this issue, they still remain stunted in their lives. In reality, more than 200 million children in all developing countries under age 5 years old were not provided with a good enough environment to reach their developmental potential (Grantham-Mc Gregor et al.
There have been many efforts in many countries to bring out solutions which can reduce the number of malnourished children. It is very important for national security issues in the long time for any nations about human resources and economics. In particular, this serious problem is occurring in developing countries. However, it varies from region to region and from country in order to country such as in South/Southeast Asia, Latin America or perhaps Sub-Saharan Africa.
Therefore, many countries try to estimate which factors affect child health, particularly health and nutritional inputs, medicines, medical care or perhaps the quality of household drinking water sources, toilet facilities, and other hygienic conditions or household assets, parental schooling, community economic and health-related characteristics (Glewwe, 1999). From many factors above, there are numerous studies found out the important role of parental schooling, especially mother’s education. It is believed 8 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com that increased education of mothers may be an important means for improvement of child health or perhaps their nutrition. As a result, they can provide safer environment from their earnings or beneficial food as well as health habits; thus, mothers are given chances in order to improve the nutrition of their children.
However, the results of the relationship of mother’s educ ation and child health were not the same from country to country. Hobcraft et al. (1984) suggested that because of large socio-economic differentials among countries, the relationship between mother’s education and child survival were different amount countries. This result is covered 28 World Fertility Surveys by Hobcraft et al.
In detail, increased education of mothers was an important factor in order to improve opportunities of child survival in larg e area of developing countries. They pointe d out that because of l arge socio - economic differentials from country to country in child survival (from age one and five), increased age of the child were widened. Both mother’s and father’s levels of education also play an important role in de termining child survival. The father’s occupation also related to this variable.
In detail, the father’s education variable increased opportunities of child survival. This result improved even with a small increasing levels of education. Mensch et al. (1985) also covered from 15 countries and had the same result as Hobcraft et al.
They both pointed out that because of large socio- economic differentials, the above association was weaker in sub-Saharan Africa than in Asia or particularly Latin America. Furthermore, Mensch et al. In Bangladesh, Lindenbaum (1990) suggested that educated women can keep greater cleanliness which explained differentials in child mortality or incidence of diarrhoeal episodes. While Cleland (1990) combined the international evidence between diarrhoean episodes and maternal education.
The author believed that education maybe play an important role in determining health knowledge, which 9 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com leads to a more innovative attitude for women who can have more opportunities in order to have some experience of school. When comparing Bolivia, Egypt and Kenya, Stewart and Sommerfelt (1991) covered from 25 Demographic and Health Surveys. They showed out that the woman’s own educational level can effect on prenatal care and mother’s education in urban was more powerful than in rural in Bolivia and Egypt while Kenya has weakly significant in this relationship after controlling urban-rural residence, a possessions index, father’s education, age, births, mother’s education, family-planning use. In Kenya, at least, the urban-rural residence variable appeared to have strong significant.
Malnutrition of children under five is also the key issue in Vietnam, as many low-income countries (WHO, 2007). UNICEF reported that 50 percent of Vietnamese children under 5 were stunted (abnormally low height for age) in 1993. In 2005, this figure has been improved with 25 percent of children (UNICEF, 2006) because of economic growth and sustained investment in primary healthcare. Haughton et al.
(1997) also showed large differences across regions and ethnic groups in malnutrition of children in Vietnam. That means the greater levels of malnutrition is concentrated on families in the northern regions, rural households and ethnic families more than the rest. National institute of nutrition and UNICEF (2011) mentioned that stunting of children under 5 was about 29.3 percent and the average rate reduced at 1.3 percent points per year in 5 years from 1995 to 2010. It is reported that around 60% of all under 5 dead who suffer neonatal mortality; a third of children under 5 are affected by stunting malnutrition, anaemia.
Moreover, the rate of overweight children is increasing year by year; and children older than 1 year old often die because of drowning and traffic accidents. There are still many problems regarding children health in Vietnam remain to be settled due to the limited quality of healthcare services in mountainous areas; 10 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com neonatal conditions and diseases; stunting malnutrition and anaemia; drowning and traffic accidents (WHO, Child health in Vietnam - Fact sheet, 2010). In summary, there have been many factors which can affect on child health in the above studies in various countries. However, there have only some descriptions in Vietnamese reports about the role of mother’s education in determining their child health.
Therefore, whether or not this relationship persists the same in Vietnam. In order to answer this question, some factors mentioned above will be applied to estimate which can explain in detail.2 Research objectives This study intents to: Evaluate the relationship between mother’s education and child health in Vietnam.3 Research scope and data This study focus on: - The women’s education levels - Child health - Some other variables: such as the height-for-age z-score, the household income (wealth index quintile), health environment (drinking water and flushing toilet) in Vietnam from the data of MICS4. 11 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.4 The structure of this study Except the introduction and the references chapter, this study is divided into 4 chapters as follows: Chapter 2: Literature review which reviews literature and empirical studies on the relationship between mother’s education and children health. This chapter discusses the results of these studies and compares the factors which can impact the relationship such as whether the difference between father’s education and mother’s education, between adopted children and own birth children, or other socio-economic dimensions such as ethnicity, geographical location, gender and assets or a wide variety of social and economic circumstances, behaviors matter and community factors.
Finally, it also provides the conceptual framework. Chapter 3: Research methodology. This chapter presents the research methodology, data source and regression technique. Finally, hypotheses are also mentioned in.
Chapter 4: Empirical results. This chapter will present the statistic descriptions of the data as well as bivariate analysis. After that, it will discuss and provide evidence from the regression results on the findings of the association mother’s education and children health.