Female Education and Maternal Health Care Utilization: Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

Background: Maternal health care Indicator Is among the key Indicators of population health, health economic development. Therefore, the study attempts to explore female education and maternal healthcare utilization in Uganda. The study identifies the causal effect of introduction of free education, by exploiting the age as an instrument at the second stage model. This instrument provides an exogenous source of variation in the years of schooling and allows to implement a regression discontinuity design, which accounts for heterogeneity in the cohort overtime. Methods: The study also uses the OLS to help predict years of schooling that are used in the second stage model in the 2SLS. The study further uses the RDD model with a running variable of birth years to observe its effect on education. To control heterogeneity in regions in the second stage model, a fixed effects model was used. Results: Female education indeed had a positive impact on maternal health care utilization. It was further found out that age also influences maternal health care utilization.Conclusions: Therefore, as an effort to improve professional maternal health care utilisation, there is need to focus on education beyond primary level. Government should also ensure that there is an improvement in community infrastructure and security across all regions and locations.

Gender Inequality in Developing Countries: A Multifactorial Review

“…Saxena et al (2013) highlighted that education improves pregnant women's behavior and attitude toward maternal health care services. Several study results suggested that higher educational attainment increases seeking healthcare behavior and attitude among women (Amwonya et al, 2022;Saxena et al, 2013). Moreover, Kaffenberger and Pritchett (2021) used the Demographic Health Survey data from 54 countries, and they found in a cross-tabulation that child mortality gap was 11.5% between educated women (20.9% experience death of a child) and uneducated women (32.4% experience death of a child).…”