For years health officials have thrown money at ways to prevent young children from dying, with little global data on effectiveness. Recently a pattern has emerged: mortality drops in proportion to the years of schooling that women attain. The relation holds true for rich countries and poor, as seen above in each rising line. Whether education rises from high levels (say, 10 years to 11) or low levels (from one year to two), child mortality drops (the lines get thinner). As a global average, education accounts for 51 percent of the decline in mortality—the biggest influence by far—according to a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Educated women, it seems, make wiser choices about hygiene, nutrition, immunization and contraception.
— Mark Fischetti
» See how female education reduces infant and childhood deaths in our July Web Exclusive
Credit: Graphic by Joshua Korenblat and Jen Christiansen
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5 Comments
Add CommentOutstanding work and clever graphic on a topic vital to humanity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is correlation, not causation. Deeper investigation required to identify the genuine agents of change in improving mortality rates.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed, the overall conclusion looks probable but correlations can be misleading. Of particular interest is the fact that even in the most educationally deficient countries significant reductions mortality were reported. This begs the question how much of the data was estimated in the 1970's vs. being more accurately measured today and how has that influenced the interpretation of the data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but this unfortunately this graphic is neither clever nor outstanding. It's actually deeply misleading. I was so annoyed when I saw it in my subscription copy of the magazine that I just wrote up a complete critique:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://simonwoodside.com/weblog/2011/7/29/scientific_american_infographics_or_chartjunk/
Compared to other science magazines, Scientific American's data graphics are poor indeed. Perhaps they should acquire Tufte's books for starting off with.
simon
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