In a study conducted in Indonesia and Bangladesh, greater levels of formal education achieved by both mothers and fathers were associated with a reduced likelihood of having growth-stunted children.

The findings highlight the importance of achieving as much schooling as possible, even in difficult situations such as civil unrest and post-disaster emergencies, the study team notes in a report in The Lancet medical journal this week.

Promotion of higher levels of formal education for both men and women - part of the second Millennium Development Goal - “should help promote gender equality, empower women, and, through better informed caregiving practices, reduce child stunting, and, over the long term, reduce the risk of child mortality.”

“Stunting represents linear growth failure due to poor nutrition and infections both before and after birth,” Dr. Richard D. Semba, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues explain in their report. Stunting in early childhood is associated with poor cognitive, motor, and social and emotional development and increased mortality.

Semba’s team looked at indicators of child growth, parental education, and social and economic status in nearly 600,000 families in Indonesia and almost 400,000 in Bangladesh.

In the families from Indonesia, roughly one third of the children younger than age 5 were growth-stunted, the investigators found. Greater education in the mother reduced the odds of child stunting by 4.4 percent in urban settings and 5.0 percent in rural settings for each extra year of formal education. Greater education in the father decreased the odds of stunting by 3 percent for each extra year of education.

In Bangladesh, where half the children showed signs of stunting, each extra year of education a mother received led to a 4.6 percent decline in risk of child stunting, while each extra year of education completed by the father led to a decrease in the risk of child stunting of 2.9 percent in rural settings and 5.4 percent in urban settings.

Increased use of “health-promoting” behaviors by educated parents - like getting their kids vaccinated and giving them vitamin supplements - may help explain the findings, Semba and colleagues suggest. They found evidence of this in the Indonesian families.

There are likely other factors at play as well, notes Dr. Theodore D. Wachs of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana in a commentary published with the study.

For example, educated mothers may have greater input in decision-making - like where and how to spend income - and studies have shown that mothers are more likely than fathers to allocate family resources in ways that promote their child’s nutrition, health and, ultimately, their physical growth.

Studies have also shown that well educated women are less apt to suffer from depression than their less educated counterparts, and infants of mothers with depression are at increased risk for growth failure.

SOURCE: The Lancet, January 26, 2008.