Saneamento e educação: bens substitutos ou complementares?

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to observe the effect of the interaction between mother's education and household infrastructure on child's health. Reduced form child's health demand equations, stratified by age, were estimated by ordinary least squares. The results show that the mother's level of education and household infrastructure have a positive effect on children's health. The interaction between mother's education and infrastructure show a negative coefficient, and therefore, a substitution effect. These results imply that children from less educated mothers need better infrastructure to keep their health at a minimum standard, while mother's with high education can protect their children from the absence of infrastructure (plumbing and sewerage system).