Linking parental education, child health and economic well-being in Cameroon

Type Conference Paper - Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) Conference
Title Linking parental education, child health and economic well-being in Cameroon
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2009
City Oxford
Country/State England
URL https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b68c/d3a91f0b9b73817ff521fd3dc6140cfc8bda.pdf
Abstract
This paper examines empirical impacts of parental education on child health, and child health on economicwell-being. Using Cameroon household Consumption survey data collected by the government statistics officein 2001 and a range of econometric methods, the existence of prominent spill-over effects linking parentalliteracy to better child health (weight-given age) is empirically validated, while controlling for other correlates.Results equally portray better child health as being significantly associated with high levels of production,surrogated by log of household total expenditures per adult – an observation attributable to complementaryeffects of child health on household economic well-being. The magnitudes of these influences vary by gender.Households headed by literate males appear more instrumental in seeking useful health practices than those bytheir female counterparts. This finding is attributable to the observation that female heads are typically singleparents, while their male counterparts often work in synergy with their spouses when seeking healthcaretechnologies. Meanwhile, results linking child health to household production imply that female headedhouseholds would exploit the resulting extra-time, budgetary savings and peace of mind at work, because ofbetter child health, to enhance economic well-being more effectively than those by their male counterparts.These results have implications for public interventions that enable women to take additional advantage oflabour market/training opportunities as a means of improving household economic well-being. In addition,public expenditures on adult literacy/training programmes can have intergenerational implications forreproductive health, economic growth and household economic well-being.

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