Literacy

• The education of parents has greater total effect on differences in child mortality than any other factor. One year of a mother's education has been associated with a 9% decrease in under 5 mortality. Teaching mothers to read can lead to a decrease in infant mortality of up to 50%.In a sample of women in rural Sierra Leone, 70% of the non-literate had experienced the deaths of children under 2 years old, while 45% of the literate had had such an experience.
  Literacy encourages people to seek medical help and adopt sound hygiene and nutrition. People who have learned to read and write are less fatalistic and more inclined to turn to a doctor in the event of illness. There is a direct correlation between the average life expectancy at birth and adult literacy rate. http://www.feedtheminds.org/literacy/about.php
• Illiteracy of females had a more detrimental impact on rural than on urban areas. In the event of high female illiteracy, male literacy was beneficial for improving the use of services for reducing infant mortality rate.
  Gokhale,Medha K., Shobha S. Rao, and Varsha R. Garole 2002. Infant Mortality in India: Use of Maternal and Child Health Services in Relation to Literacy Status. J HEALTH POPUL NUTR 20(2):138-147. http://www.icddrb.org/pub/publication.jsp?classificationID=30&pubID=243