Title: Exploring the Educational Paradox on Preterm Births in Colombia

Speaker: Harold Mera León (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)

Location: Aula 205 (ex 32) – DISIA – Viale Morgagni 59 (need to register here https://labdisia.disia.unifi.it/reserve205/)

Abstract: Why could mothers with higher education be more prone to preterm births? Preterm birth (PTB) is widely recognized as a primary causal connection to birth and early childhood losses. We build on Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological approach and assess the effect of a mother’s education level on PTB odds. Combining Bronfenbrenner’s framework with empirical population observations, we analyze data from the National Health Statistics Surveys (NHSS), the National Centre of Historical Memory (NCHM), the 2012 Poverty Mission, and the Information System of Victims Unit. We fit a logistic model to explore the paradoxical relation between mothers with higher education and the odds of PTB (Mera, 2021) by estimating the moderation effect of higher education over regional violence. We argue that during 2002, pregnant women who could complete university level before labor were more prone to give PTB (under 38 weeks of gestational time) due to the high levels of unemployment and violence. However, when considering the interaction between regional violence and a mother’s education level, the odds of PTB increase when mothers cannot reach university level, and the effect of violence over the dyad reduces for mothers who could complete university. Hence, even though a pregnant woman with university-level living in regions with high levels of violence and unemployment is more likely to experience stress, the education level operates as a shielding factor, moderating the harmless effect of violence only in specific cases and regions where unemployment is not that high.