title: Mothers' reading skills and child survival in Nigeria: examining the relevance of mothers' decision-making power.
abstract: Mothers' literacy skills are emerging as a key determinant of children's health and survival in low-income contexts, with emphasis on the cognitive and psychological agency that literacy skills provide. This work has clearly established a strong association between mothers' reading skills--a key subcomponent of broader literacy and language skills--and child mortality. However, this relatively nascent literature has not yet considered how broader social structures condition the process. In Nigeria and in sub-Saharan Africa more broadly, gender-based social inequality constrains many mothers' decision-making power over children's health matters; this structural feature may condition the association between mothers' reading skills and child mortality. This paper uses data from the 2003 Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey (N = 12,076) to test the conditionality of the relationship between mothers' reading skills and child survival on mothers' decision-making power, highlighting how structural realities should factor more heavily into this individual-action-oriented literature. Among Nigerian children whose mothers have decision-making power, mothers' reading skills convey a 27 percent lower risk of child mortality; however, for children whose mothers lack decision-making power, mothers' reading skills do not yield a significant survival advantage. Overall, these findings support the need for future work to further analyze how broader social structures condition the benefits of mothers' reading skills for children's health.
authors.affiliation: Sociology and Demography, Penn State University, 211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802, United States. Electronic address: egs136@psu.edu.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Smith-Greenaway
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D046688:Child Mortality; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003657:Decision Making; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009549:Nigeria / Q000453:epidemiology; D011209:Power, Psychological; D011932:Reading; D018570:Risk Assessment; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Child mortality; Decision-making power; Mothers' reading skills; Nigeria; Sub-Saharan Africa