Maternal education and preventive health behavior: Evidence from Cambodia

Abstract

We examine the effect of maternal education on preventive health behavior using data from Cambodia. Given concerns about the endogeneity of education, we employ an instrumental variable (IV) strategy that exploits the variation in the average years of maternal education across provinces and between cohorts that entered primary school following the 1993 UNICEF Education Plan and older cohorts, as the 1993 reform substantially altered the educational environment following decades of political conflict. The IV estimates indicate that higher maternal education has positive effects on preventive health behavior, including receiving adequate antenatal care, having skilled birth attendants, and not smoking. These results further suggest that maternal information‐gathering ability and bargaining power may serve as mechanisms linking maternal education to preventive health behavior.