Pk. Muhuri, HEALTH-PROGRAMS, MATERNAL EDUCATION, AND DIFFERENTIAL CHILD-MORTALITYIN MATLAB, BANGLADESH, Population and development review, 21(4), 1995, pp. 813
This article examines the extent to which differences in child mortali
ty linked to mother's education are affected by health intervention pr
ograms. The Matlab research area in Bangladesh, site of the study, exh
ibits variations in the composition of services within the interventio
n area, the presence of a comparison group, and a time series of accur
ate data since the 1960s. Results show that children in the ''mother h
ad no schooling'' subgroup benefited most from the interventions. Diff
erences in child mortality linked to maternal schooling were sharply d
iminished in the ''intensive'' blocks of the Matlab intervention area,
moderately reduced in the nonintensive blocks, and remained large in
the comparison area. In the intensive intervention area, the effect of
maternal schooling on overall child mortality was diminished particul
arly because of the absence of measles deaths, while insignificant dif
ferences were related to mother's schooling in deaths from watery diar
rhea, fever, respiratory diseases, and ''other causes,'' with the exce
ption of dysentery and accidental drowning.