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Author: Allston, Adam
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Allston, Adam |
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The Significance of Wealth in Understanding Associations between Race and the Risk of Low Birth Weight Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins University, 2011 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Birthweight; Mothers, Race; Racial Differences; Socioeconomic Factors; Wealth Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. Purpose: Previous studies have documented persistent disparities in the rate of low birth weight between African Americans and Whites in the U.S. across socioeconomic strata based on educationally defined and income-related measures. Although such findings do not preclude the notion that the disparity in the risk of low birth weight between African Americans and Whites in the U.S. is primarily attributable to non-socioeconomic racial characteristics, the validity of such a conclusion is in part dependent on the assumption that adequate measures of socioeconomic position have been utilized in previous research. Given the potential for residual confounding by socioeconomic position associated with the exclusion of wealth-related measures, previous estimates concerning the race-related risk of low birth weight net prevalent inequalities in economic well-being may be biased. Utilizing data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), the current study proposed to address this issue by examining if there is an association between wealth and the risk of low birth weight independent of other resource-based indicators of socioeconomic position, as well the extent to which adjusting for differentials in wealth produces a greater reduction in the disparity in the risk of low birth weight between African Americans and Whites in the U.S. than that observed by adjusting only for differentials in educational attainment and/or poverty level. Methods: Multiple GEE models were generated utilizing demographic, pregnancy-related, educational, poverty, and wealth-related variables. Substantive comparisons across GEE models were done based on an estimate of the percent reduction in the baseline odds ratio for low birth weight in comparing non-Hispanic Blacks to non-Hispanic Whites associated with individual and collective socioeconomic related adjustments. Results: Despite documenting a substantial socioeconomic disadvantage among non-Hispanic Black births relative to non-Hispanic White births, accounting for differentials in wealth-status produced only minimal reductions in the elevated odds of low birth weight observed among non-Hispanic Black births when compared to non-Hispanic White births. Conclusion: Differentials in current wealth status appear to have little impact on observed disparities in low birth weight between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White births independent of traditional socioeconomic indicators such as income and maternal education. |
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Bibliography Citation
Allston, Adam. The Significance of Wealth in Understanding Associations between Race and the Risk of Low Birth Weight. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins University, 2011. |