Teaching women to read and write helps to improve the well-being of the entire family, reduce fertility rates, ensure a greater demand for education among their sons and daughters, improve family dietary and sanitary conditions and increase their status within the community. Educate a boy and you educate one person. Educate a girl and you educate a nation. A. Ibn Badis, an Algerian Muslim Reformist. The education of parents has greater total effect on differences in child mortality than any other factor.
Literacy encourages people to seek medical help and adopt sound hygiene and nutrition.
People who have learned to read and write are less fatalistic and more inclined to turn to a doctor in the event of illness. There is a direct correlation between the average life expectancy at birth and adult literacy rate. Literacy changes lives Literates place higher value on the education of children. Adult education encourages children's education. Children who live in an illiterate environment tend to forget what they have learned.