Kappelman Abigail L, Ro Annie, Admon Lindsay, Needham Belinda L, Fleischer Nancy L
Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2029, USA.
Department of Health, Society, and Behavior, University of California Irvine Wen School of Population and Public Health, 856 Health Sciences Quad, Irvine, CA, 92697-3957, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2025 Feb;366:117675. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117675. Epub 2025 Jan 9.
Persistent racial disparities in low birth weight (LBW) in the United States may be better understood through the adoption of a life course perspective that considers differential exposure and vulnerability of Black and White women to socioeconomic position across generations. Using a multigenerational dataset of singleton birth certificates from South Carolina from 1989 to 2020 linked along the maternal line, we constructed intergenerational social mobility trajectories of grandmaternal and maternal education and compared unadjusted and adjusted associations between trajectories and LBW among Black and White women. We found that White women were more likely to be upwardly mobile, and Black women to be downwardly mobile. We found a protective association between upward mobility and LBW for all White women, but only for the most highly educated Black women, consistent with the theory of marginalization-related diminished returns. We also observed a difference by race in the association between downward mobility and LBW, such that high childhood socioeconomic position better buffered low adulthood socioeconomic position for White women than Black women, consistent with theories of compensatory advantage. Finally, we observed racial disparities in the prevalence of LBW even at the highest levels of maternal education, highlighting the inability of even high socioeconomic position across two generations to reduce Black/White disparities in LBW.
通过采用生命历程视角，或许能更好地理解美国低出生体重（LBW）方面持续存在的种族差异，该视角考虑了黑人和白人女性在代际间社会经济地位的不同暴露情况和脆弱性。利用1989年至2020年南卡罗来纳州单胎出生证明的多代数据集，这些数据集沿母系相连，我们构建了祖母和母亲教育程度的代际社会流动轨迹，并比较了轨迹与黑人和白人女性低出生体重之间未经调整和调整后的关联。我们发现，白人女性更有可能向上流动，而黑人女性更有可能向下流动。我们发现，向上流动与所有白人女性的低出生体重之间存在保护关联，但仅与受教育程度最高的黑人女性存在这种关联，这与边缘化相关的收益递减理论一致。我们还观察到，向下流动与低出生体重之间的关联存在种族差异，即童年时期较高的社会经济地位对白人女性成年后较低社会经济地位的缓冲作用比对黑人女性更强，这与补偿优势理论一致。最后，我们观察到，即使在母亲教育程度最高的水平上，低出生体重的患病率也存在种族差异，这凸显了即使两代人都处于较高的社会经济地位，也无法减少低出生体重方面的黑白差异。
