[Effects on Health] Poverty doesn't explain racial gap in birthweight

from Reuters

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Upwardly mobile white women who grew up in poverty have a lower risk of having an underweight infant, but the same is not true of black women, a study published Tuesday suggests.

The findings, based on a U.S. health survey begun in 1979, add to evidence that factors others than poverty contribute to racial disparities in infant birthweight.

It's well known that African-American women are more likely to have a low-birthweight baby than white women are -- the difference is even seen among middle-class and college-educated women.

One explanation, researchers have speculated, is that black women are more likely to have grown up in poverty, and that this has life-long effects on their health, no matter what their income and education as adults.

The new study, which focused on black and white women who grew up in poor households, tried to address this question, explained lead author Dr. Cynthia G. Colen, a researcher at Columbia University in New York.

She and her colleagues found that white women who became "upwardly mobile" as adults were about half as likely to have an underweight baby as white women who remained poor.

In contrast, upwardly mobile black women saw no such benefit, the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.

The persistence of the disparity, they write, suggests that financial resources alone are not to blame. Even when they become more educated and financially stable, black women may face challenges that white women do not, according to Colen and her colleagues. Among these are discrimination in housing and work, and higher levels of day-to-day stress.

"For example," Colen told Reuters Health, "an upwardly mobile African-American family may have the financial means to move into a better neighborhood with lower rates of crime, less pollution, and improved access to medical services, but due to segregation, their residential choices will be limited."

Two factors that did seem to lower the risk of low birthweight among black mothers were marriage and living with the child's grandmother -- regardless of what the family income was. This suggests that the support of family goes beyond financial security, according to Colen.

Family members, she noted, may act as a "buffer" against the health effects of dealing with discrimination and other stresses of daily life.


SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, November 2006.