Using the Orphanhood Method to Explore the Association Between Children’s Education and Maternal Survival in Chile

Highly educated children can be a resource for improving parents’ health and increasing their longevity by providing them with health-related information, financial help, and other forms of support. However, in countries with limited data, this association remains uncertain due to the absence of linked information on children's education and parental mortality. To overcome this limitation, we use the orphanhood method to estimate maternal survival by maternal and adult children’s educational levels in Chile. We find that higher educational attainment among adult children is positively associated with better maternal survival outcomes, particularly among mothers with low education. The results are consistent with the literature on the association between children's education and parental survival. We contribute to this literature by highlighting the possibility of assessing such an association using an indirect method to estimate mortality, which may be more applicable to countries without available data.