Dartmouth Events

For 30 years health surveys have shown that a woman's school attainment is consistently associated with reduced child mortality and other positive health outcomes in less developed countries, even with socioeconomic factors held constant, but the process involved has been a mystery to survey researchers. The talk will draw on our book, Literacy and Mothering (2012), presenting evidence from Mexico, Nepal, Venezuela and Zambia to support the theory that girls learn and retain from classroom experience the bureaucratic literacy skills that they use as mothers to interact with the health media and health bureaucracy. We will discuss the implications of these results for policy and for further work on health literacy and health navigation skills that takes educational research, particularly literacy assessment, seriously