Madden David
University College Dublin, Ireland.
J Biosoc Sci. 2014 Mar;46(2):248-65. doi: 10.1017/S0021932013000187. Epub 2013 Apr 30.
There is now fairly substantial evidence of a socioeconomic gradient in low birth weight for developed countries. The standard summary statistic for this gradient is the concentration index. Using data from the recently published Growing Up in Ireland survey, this paper calculates this index for low birth weight arising from preterm and intrauterine growth retardation. It also carries out a decomposition of this index for the different sources of low birth weight and finds that income inequality appears to be less important for the case of preterm births, while father's education and local environmental conditions appear to be more relevant for intrauterine growth retardation. The application of the standard Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition also indicates that the socioeconomic gradient for low birth weight appears to arise owing to different characteristics between rich and poor, and not because the impact of any given characteristic on low birth weight differs between rich and poor.
现在有相当多的证据表明，在发达国家，低出生体重存在社会经济梯度。这个梯度的标准汇总统计量是集中指数。利用最近公布的爱尔兰成长调查数据，本文计算了早产和宫内生长迟缓导致的低出生体重的这一指数。它还对低出生体重的不同来源进行了该指数的分解，发现收入不平等在早产情况下似乎不太重要，而父亲的教育程度和当地环境条件在宫内生长迟缓方面似乎更相关。标准的布林德-奥萨克分解的应用也表明，低出生体重的社会经济梯度似乎是由于贫富之间的不同特征引起的，而不是因为任何给定特征对低出生体重的影响在贫富之间存在差异。
