Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all Educational Attainment and Maternal Mortality

We examine whether a causal relationship exists between maternal education and maternal mortality. Despite considerable evidence in favour of a causal relationship between education and a range of other health behaviours and outcomes, and a significant gradient between maternal mortality and education across time and countries, no comprehensive study exists to examine whether this relationship is—at least in part—causal. By forming a large panel of data consisting of 108 countries over 20 years, and by examining three natural experiments resulting in plausibly exogenous expansions in education, we present considerable evidence that increases in maternal education causally reduce the likelihood of dying in child birth. The size of this relationship is considerable. Our preferred estimates suggest that a country moving from 0 to 1 years of education will reduce maternal mortality by 174 deaths per 100,000 births, while moving from 7 to 8 years results in a smaller, but still significant, 15 deaths per 100,000 births.