New Study Says Children Who Are Breastfed as Infants Are More Likely to Do Well in School and to Enroll in College

A new study by researchers at American University and the University of Colorado at Denver has found that infants who are breastfed are more likely than bottle-fed babies to do well in school when they grow up. The data showed that students who were breastfed as infants did better in high school and were more likely to enroll in college than students who were raised on bottled milk or formula.

The study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, found that every additional month of breastfeeding as an infant correlated with a 0.019 point increase in the child’s high school grade point average. Each additional month a student was breastfed as an infant also increased the probability that the student would enroll in college.

This data is extremely important given the fact that black infants are breastfed at a significantly lower rate than white, Hispanic, and Asian-American infants. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that only 59 percent of African-American babies are ever breastfed and only 20 percent are breastfed six months after birth. For white babies, 75 percent are breastfed at some point and more than one third are still being breastfed six months after they were born.