> "Levels of reading literacy are more reliable predictors of economic and social well-being than is the quantity of education as measured by years at school or in post-school education."
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> I.e., the better you can read, the better off and healthier you are.
Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen have written a lot about how female literacy in India tends to reduce infant mortality, excess female mortality, and excess mortality in general. A speedy Google provides this PDF of a short paper by Drèze, Guio, and Murthi with some figures.
"Female literacy has a negative, large and statistically significant effect on child mortality. Female literacy also has a negative (and statistically significant) effect on FD, the extent of female disadvantage in child survival. ...It is worth noting that higher female literacy reduces child mortality, and anti-female bias in child survival, independently of male literacy. Male literacy also has a negative effect on child mortality (independently of female Iiteracy), but the effect of male literacy is much smaller than that of female literacy, and is not statistically significant. Male literacy has a significant effect on the extent of gender bias in child survival, in the direction of enhancing female disadvantage."