Female education and maternal health care utilization: evidence from Uganda

Maternal health care (MHC) utilization is one of the Millennium Development Goals (SDG) of pursuit. Globally, most low-income countries like Uganda contribute greatly to pregnancy-related mortalities that are largely preventable through adequate utilization of essential maternal health care services. Though Uganda over time has registered some increase in maternal utilization, this has been attributed to a number of factors. This study intended to demonstrate whether the introduction of free primary education in Uganda led to increase in the utilization of maternal health services. To address this, we used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Two Stage Least Squares (2SLS), Probit and Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) models using Demographic Health Survey (DHS) data 2006 and 2011. The study found out that indeed the introduction of free primary education increased the utilization of MHC.