Health Programs, Maternal Education, and Differential Child Mortality in Matlab, Bangladesh

This article examines the extent to which differences in child mortality linked to mother's education are affected by health intervention programs. The Matlab research area in Bangladesh, site of the study, exhibits variations in the composition of services within the intervention area, the presence of a comparison group, and a time series of accurate data since the 1960s. Results show that children in the "mother had no schooling" subgroup benefited most from the interventions. Differences in child mortality linked to maternal schooling were sharply diminished 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 particularly because of the absence of measles deaths, while insignificant differences were related to mother's schooling in deaths from watery diarrhea, fever, respiratory diseases, and "other causes," with the exception of dysentery and accidental drowning.