The long‐term impact of education on dietary diversity among women in Zimbabwe

Abstract

Education is perceived to have a positive impact on a variety of health outcomes. However, it is unclear how causal this association is or what could account for the observed relationship, especially in low-income countries.This study examined the educational gradient in dietary diversity among young women using individual-level survey data from Zimbabwe. A parametric fuzzy regression discontinuity design was used in the empirical analysis, with school reform exposure serving as an instrumental variable for educational attainment. The results show that increased schooling improves dietary diversity among women and that this effect is large and statistically significant. An examination of the potential mechanisms by which education improves dietary diversity revealed that women with more education are more likely to engage with print media by reading newspapers or magazines, to be literate, to access prenatal care when pregnant, to be wealthier, to have fewer children, and to live in metropolitan areas. These findings suggest that expanding educational opportunities, particularly for young girls in developing countries like Zimbabwe, could be a useful policy strategy to promote healthy eating among young women and, as a result, could enhance population health and nutrition outcomes.

Dietary Quality and Associated Factors among Women of Reproductive Age in Six Sub-Saharan African Countries

“…The DQQ survey in Côte d’Ivoire included only female farmers participating in a project to strengthen agricultural and livestock productivity and improve food security and nutrition, particularly through increasing the cultivation and consumption of vitamin A-rich foods. The positive association between women’s educational status and dietary quality observed in our study has been shown in other SSA settings [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. In a study examining adult dietary patterns across 185 countries, increased education was linked to higher diet quality scores [ 4 ].…”

Practice of key essential nutrition action messages and associated factors among mothers of children aged six months to two years old in Karat town, Konso zone, South Ethiopia, 2024: a community-based cross-sectional study

“…The increased awareness of health-related issues, including nutrition, among educated participants, positively influences their engagement in ENA practices. This, in turn, leads to better maternal and child nutrition outcomes ( 63 , 64 ).…”

The Prevalence and Determinants of Child Hunger and Its Associations with Early Childhood Nutritional Status among Urban Poverty Households during COVID-19 Pandemic in Petaling District, Malaysia: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Survey

“…We also realized the significance of DDS as a child hunger determinant may also be confounded by other potential social determinants such as total household income, parental employment status and highest education levels, financial aid status, and total number of children within the households. This endogeneity issue between DDS and child hunger or child nutritional status, particularly, is more important in social science and econometrics [ 74 , 75 ] than in nutritional sciences [ 76 ], and ignoring this problem may introduce significant systematic bias to the estimates of the regression coefficient for DDS, as presented in Table 6 . To address this issue, we performed additional analyses where we treated DDS as an endogenous (dependent) variable and regressed it on the other potential social determinants of child hunger.…”