We use data from a large sample of low and middle income countries to study the association (or “gradient”) between child height and maternal education. While the strong positive association between child health and measures of parental socio-economic status (SES) is well established, we...

We use data from a large sample of low- and middle-income countries to study the association (or “gradient") between child height and maternal education. We show that the association is small at birth, rises throughout childhood and declines in adolescence as girls and boys go through puberty....