Degrees of Improvement? The Relationship between Maternal Educational Attainment, Race, and Infant Mortality

Melissa H. Humphries, University of Texas at Austin

The relationship between maternal education and infant mortality is not uniform across racial/ethnic groups. Many studies of this relationship find that increasing maternal education is not necessarily associated with lower infant mortality for non-Hispanic Blacks as it is for non-Hispanic Whites. Previous research on this topic has only been able to measure maternal education in number of years of schooling. However, recent changes to the U.S. birth certificates allow us to examine maternal education in terms of highest degree earned. With these new data, we can theorize the relationship between education and infant mortality in a different way, and examine whether the actual completion of a diploma or degree improves infant mortality outcomes. I use cohort data from the 2004 NCHS Linked Birth/Infant Death Files for seven states that have the new reporting of maternal education in degrees to explore infant mortality rates across levels of education and race.

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Presented in Session 149: Infant and Child Mortality