Reexamining Racial Birth Outcome Disparities: The Role of Early Life Poverty and Disadvantage

• In Event: 322 - Section on Medical Sociology Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 11. Maternal Health

Abstract

Decades of sociological research documents large and persistent birth outcome disparities between infants born to white and black mothers, such that black infants are twice as likely to be born in poor health (i.e. premature, low birth weight (LBW), or small for gestational age (SGA)) compared to white infants (Lu and Halfon 2003). Extant research also demonstrates these disparities are largely unaccounted for by black and white mothers’ differential adult risk and protective factors (Lu and Halfon 2003). Thus, using linked data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and Young Adult cohorts (N=2,124), the current study examines whether mothers’ exposure to poverty during childhood and adolescence (ages 0 to 14) is associated with infant health at birth in terms of prematurity, LBW, and SGA, as well as whether mothers’ exposure to early life poverty and disadvantage accounts for black-white disparities in these outcomes. Results from logistic regression analyses and predicted probabilities indicate black-white birth outcomes disparities (prematurity and LBW) are greatest among mothers who experienced little to no exposure to poverty in early life. No significant differences in prematurity, LBW, or SGA were observed between black and white mothers who spent most of their early lives living in poverty.

Author

• Laura Freeman Cenegy, Rice University