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 Breast-Feeding Boosts Child's School Performance
Source: HealthDay News Date: 6/18/09
Children who were breast-fed do better in high school and are more likely to go to college than their bottle-fed siblings, researchers report.
While the health benefits of breast-feeding to both infants and mothers is well known, this study suggests the practice may have educational benefits as
well.
This is the first study using data on siblings to examine the effect of
breast-feeding on high school completion and college attendance, the
researchers noted.
"We
compare sibling pairs -- one of whom was breast-fed and one of whom was
not, or siblings who were breast-fed for different durations -- and
find consistent evidence that breast-fed children have higher high
school grade point averages and a higher probability of attending
college," said study co-author Joseph Sabia, an assistant professor of
public policy at American University in Washington, D.C.
Since
their sample contained a variety of adolescents, the researchers ruled
out factors such as socioeconomic status in the connection between
breast-feeding and educational achievement, Sabia said.
The report is published in the June 11 issue of the Journal of Human Capital.
For
the report, Sabia and his colleague Daniel Rees, a professor of
economics at the University of Colorado Denver, used data from the
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. They looked at the
breast-feeding histories of 126 siblings from 59 families; high school
graduation and college attendance data was obtained for 191 siblings
from 90 families.
"If
you're breast-fed, your high school GPA goes up substantially, and the
likelihood that you go on to college goes up," Rees said.
For
every month you are breast-fed, your high school GPA goes up about 1
percent and your probability of going to college goes up about 2
percent, Rees added.
"We
found that more than one-half of the estimated effect of being
breast-fed on high school grades can be linked to improvements in
cognitive ability and health," Sabia said. "Thus, we conclude that
improvements in cognitive ability and adolescent health may be
important pathways through which breast-feeding affects long-term
academic achievement," he said.
About one-fifth of the increased likelihood of going to college appears to be due to breast-feeding, Rees added.
"This
is another benefit of breast-feeding," Rees said. "We know that
breast-feeding leads to better health, higher IQ, but the next step is
what are the implications, and this is an important implication," he
said.
Dr.
David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale
University School of Medicine, said this study may not prove a
connection between school performance and breast-feeding, but it could
be another reason to breast-feed your baby.
"An
array of health benefits is convincingly associated with
breast-feeding, including a reduced risk of both infections and obesity
in the breast-fed child," Katz said. "Less certain, but long suggested,
is enhanced cognitive development in breast-fed children as well."
It
could be that factors that determine whether or not a baby is
breast-fed are an important piece of the puzzle, Katz noted. "Why a
baby is fed one way or another may matter as much as which way a baby
is fed," he said. "A study of association such as this cannot fully
resolve that issue."
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