Peer-reviewed article
Gender and Child Nutrition: Implications of Mother’s Education in Malawi
Martin Limbikani Mwale, Tony Mwenda Kamninga, Gowokani Chijere Chirwa ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how gender differences in child nutrition in Malawi vary depending on mothers' education levels. Using data from a 2014 national survey of children under five, researchers measured height and stunting to assess nutrition. They found that as mothers' education increases, girls tend to receive more nutrition investment relative to boys. However, gender gaps in stunting persist among children whose mothers have primary or secondary education, but disappear at both the lowest and highest education levels.
Key points
- Female children show a height-for-age advantage that increases when mothers have high education levels
- Stunting differences between boys and girls persist only among middle-educated mothers (primary and secondary education)
- Gender nutrition gaps disappear at both low and high levels of mother's education
- Female nutrition premiums reduce with increasing mother's education only when it would cause male child nutrition deficiency
- Gendered nutrition gaps are heterogeneous and conditional on mother's education level
Limitations
This is a cross-sectional analysis using secondary data, so it cannot establish causation or explain the mechanisms behind the education-gender-nutrition patterns. The study describes associations but does not evaluate an intervention or policy change.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to understand how gender gaps in child nutrition vary across different levels of mother’s education. We obtained anthropometric indicators from a secondary and publicly accessible Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS-2014) data. We used height-for-age and stunting as nutrition indicators and gender as the main determinant while splitting the sample by mother’s education. We apply Ordinary Least Squares on the data in Stata 16 to understand if female and male differences in under-five child nutrition differs conditional on the level of education for their mother, while controlling for diverse child, household and community characteristics. Our finding suggests that female child height for age premium increases at high levels of mother’s education and differences in stunting disappear amongst uneducated and highly educated mothers while persisting amongst the middle education levels (primary and secondary educated mothers). We conclude that gendered nutrition gaps are heterogeneous across different levels of mother education. In the case of a rural economy of sub-Sahara (SSA) such as Malawi, female children get the lion’s share of nutrition investment as the education of the mother increases. However, the female nutrition premium reduces with increasing education only when it threatens the male child into nutrition deficiency.