Cynthia G. Colen, Arline T. Geronimus, John Bound, and Sherman
A. James, Maternal Upward Socioeconomic Mobility and Black-White
Disparities in Infant Birthweight, November 2006, Vol 96, No.
11 | American Journal of Public Health 2032-2039
Objectives. We estimate the extent to which upward socioeconomic
mobility limits the probability that Black and White women who spent
their childhoods in or near poverty will give birth to a low-birthweight
baby.
Methods. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979
and the 1970 US Census were used to complete a series of logistic
regression models. We restricted multivariate analyses to female
survey respondents who, at 14 years of age, were living in
households in which the income-to-needs ratio did not exceed 200% of
poverty.
Results. For White women, the probability of giving birth to a low-birthweight
baby decreases by 48% for every 1 unit increase in the natural
logarithm of adult family income, once the effects of all other
covariates are taken into account. For Black women, the relation
between adult family income and the probability of low birthweight
is also negative; however, this association fails to reach
statistical significance.
Conclusions. Upward socioeconomic mobility contributes to
improved birth outcomes among infants born to White women who were
poor as children, but the same does not hold true for their Black
counterparts
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