Updated: MARCH 3, 2016 — 4:00 AM EST

by Emiliano Tatar, M.D., Pediatrician at Einstein Healthcare Network Roxborough Plaza

Part I of a two-part analysis on the data on breastfeeding vs. formula feeding.

…Overall, breastfeeding is a difficult topic to study. Economist Emily Oster, who has written about studies on breastfeeding says, “Maternal IQ is also very strongly related to obesity, mortality, and disease. This mechanism is probably largely through the relationship with socioeconomic status more generally. Socioeconomic status is not well measured in most data – controls for education are imperfect – which means that basically all of these relationships are confounded. All of these variables are interconnected and interdependent, which makes the specific outcomes of breast versus formula feeding hard to clarify”…