Research is showing that education and well-being are inextricably linked.

A study in rural Pakistan found that a relatively minor improvement in nutrition would increase the likelihood of starting school by 4 percent for boys and 19 percent for girls.

Conversely, a farmer with four years of elementary education is, on average, 8.7 percent more productive than a farmer with no education. And a recent study in Uganda found that people who finished primary school were half as likely to contract HIV as those with little or no education. Those who finished secondary school were only 15 percent as likely to contract the disease.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2005 issue of World Ark magazine, a publication of Heifer International [1]. Used with permission.