Is maternal higher education effective in preventing child malnutrition? Evidence from literature

Most developing countries remain concerned about malnutrition in all its forms, including undernutrition and overnutrition. According to the World Health Organization in 2020, 149 million children under the age of 5 are stunted, 45 million are wasted, and 38.9 million are overweight or obese. Approximately 45% of all deaths among children under five are caused by it. The purpose of this paper was to determine whether maternal higher education helps to prevents child malnutrition. In order to reach the conclusions, an extensive literature review was conducted. Results indicated that mothers' higher education is very important since it gives them a wealth of resources to make better decisions for their children. In addition to providing them with the skills they need to care for their children, it can also help them improve the feeding practices, offer them a choice of health facilities, make them aware of nutrition needs and change their perception of medicine and diseases. For the child malnutrition to be controlled at its lowest level, higher education should be spread among the women in general and among expecting and lactating mothers in particular.