African American Women's Lifetime Upward Economic Mobility and Preterm Birth: the Effect of Fetal Programming

Overview

Journal Am J Public Health

Specialty Public Health

Date 2011 Feb 19

PMID 21330589

Citations 38

Authors

James W Collins Jr

Kristin M Rankin

Richard J David

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Objectives: We investigated whether African American mothers' upward economic mobility across the life course and having been of low birth weight are associated with the preterm birth of their children.

Methods: We performed stratified and multilevel logistic regression analyses on an Illinois transgenerational data set of African American infants (born 1989-1991) and their mothers (n = 11 265; born 1956-1976) with appended US Census income information.

Results: African American mothers with a lifelong residence in impoverished neighborhoods had a preterm birthrate of 18.7%. African American mothers with early life impoverishment who experienced low, modest, or high upward economic mobility by adulthood had lower preterm birthrates of 16.0% (rate ratio [RR] = 0.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.8, 0.9), 15.2% (RR = 0.8; 95% CI = 0.7, 0.9), and 12.4% (RR = 0.7; 95% CI = 0.6, 0.8), respectively. In multilevel logistic regression models of former low birth weight and non-low birth weight mothers aged 20 to 35 years, the adjusted odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of preterm birth for those who experienced high upward economic mobility (vs those with lifelong impoverishment) was 0.9 (0.5-1.6) and 0.7 (0.5-0.9), respectively.

Conclusions: African American mother's upward economic mobility from early life impoverishment is associated with a decreased risk of preterm birth. However, consistent with fetal programming, this phenomenon fails to occur among mothers born at low birth weight.

Citing Articles

Black/White disparities in low birth weight across maternal trajectories of social mobility in South Carolina.

Kappelman A, Ro A, Admon L, Needham B, Fleischer N Soc Sci Med. 2025; 366:117675.

PMID: 39809059 PMC: 11822866. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.117675.

Lifetime Upward Economic Mobility and US-Born Latina Women's Preterm Birth Rates.

Feister J, Najera C, Rankin K, Collins J Matern Child Health J. 2024; 28(6):1086-1091.

PMID: 38308756 PMC: 11058059. DOI: 10.1007/s10995-023-03890-3.

In Search of the Promised Land: County-Level Disadvantage and Low Birth Weight among Black Mothers of the Great Migration.

Vu C, Arcaya M, Kawachi I, Williams D J Urban Health. 2023; 100(6):1093-1101.

PMID: 37580548 PMC: 10728401. DOI: 10.1007/s11524-023-00778-z.

Neighborhood Income Mobility and Risk of Neonatal and Maternal Morbidity.

Jairam J, Vigod S, Siddiqi A, Guan J, Boblitz A, Wang X JAMA Netw Open. 2023; 6(5):e2315301.

PMID: 37219900 PMC: 10208146. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.15301.

The Relation of Neighborhood Racial and Income Polarity to Preterm Birth Rates in Chicago.

Weiss A, Reina M, Matoba N, Prachand N, Collins Jr J Matern Child Health J. 2023; 27(3):556-565.

PMID: 36754921 DOI: 10.1007/s10995-023-03608-5.

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