TY - JOUR
T1 - Maternal educational attainment and infant mortality in the United States
T2 - Does the gradient vary by race/ethnicity and nativity?
AU - Green, Tiffany
AU - Hamilton, Tod G.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was conducted in part through the generous support of the Foundation for Child Development's Young Scholar Program for Tiffany Green. The viewpoints expressed here are those of the authors and do not reflect those of the Foundation. Support for this research was also provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant 5R24HD047879). The authors acknowledge statistical support from Dawn Koffman, a statistical consultant in the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. The authors are solely responsible for any errors or omissions.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Tiffany Green & Tod G. Hamilton.
PY - 2019/7/1
Y1 - 2019/7/1
N2 - BACKGROUND Maternal education-infant health gradients are flatter among foreign-born mothers than U.S.-born mothers; However, because common metrics of infant health are less predictive of infant mortality for some racial/ethnic and nativity groups, further study of maternal education-infant mortality gradients is necessary. OBJECTIVE We investigate whether maternal education-infant mortality gradients vary by race/ethnicity and nativity among infants born to mothers in the United States. METHODS We use data from the 1998-2002 National Vital Statistics Birth Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data published by the National Center for Health Statistics (N = 17,520,140) to estimate logistic regression models predicting infant, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality by race/ethnicity and nativity. RESULTS The negative associations between maternal education and infant mortality are stronger for US-born mothers than foreign-born mothers. Among both groups, Non-Hispanic whites have the highest returns to education and Non-Hispanic blacks have the lowest returns. While foreign-born mothers are less likely to have an infant die than their native-born counterparts, this advantage is largest at the lowest levels of education and converges at the highest levels of education. For most racial/ethnic groups, the maternal education-infant mortality gradient is steeper during the postneonatal period than during the neonatal period. CONCLUSIONS The maternal education-infant mortality gradient varies substantially by the timing of infant death, race/ethnicity, and nativity. CONTRIBUTION This study extends the literature on nativity disparities in infant health by documenting how the maternal education-infant mortality gradient varies by nativity within racial/ethnic groups. To our knowledge, this is the first study to produce these estimates.
AB - BACKGROUND Maternal education-infant health gradients are flatter among foreign-born mothers than U.S.-born mothers; However, because common metrics of infant health are less predictive of infant mortality for some racial/ethnic and nativity groups, further study of maternal education-infant mortality gradients is necessary. OBJECTIVE We investigate whether maternal education-infant mortality gradients vary by race/ethnicity and nativity among infants born to mothers in the United States. METHODS We use data from the 1998-2002 National Vital Statistics Birth Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data published by the National Center for Health Statistics (N = 17,520,140) to estimate logistic regression models predicting infant, neonatal, and postneonatal mortality by race/ethnicity and nativity. RESULTS The negative associations between maternal education and infant mortality are stronger for US-born mothers than foreign-born mothers. Among both groups, Non-Hispanic whites have the highest returns to education and Non-Hispanic blacks have the lowest returns. While foreign-born mothers are less likely to have an infant die than their native-born counterparts, this advantage is largest at the lowest levels of education and converges at the highest levels of education. For most racial/ethnic groups, the maternal education-infant mortality gradient is steeper during the postneonatal period than during the neonatal period. CONCLUSIONS The maternal education-infant mortality gradient varies substantially by the timing of infant death, race/ethnicity, and nativity. CONTRIBUTION This study extends the literature on nativity disparities in infant health by documenting how the maternal education-infant mortality gradient varies by nativity within racial/ethnic groups. To our knowledge, this is the first study to produce these estimates.
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U2 - 10.4054/DemRes.2019.41.25
DO - 10.4054/DemRes.2019.41.25
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85085305320
SN - 1435-9871
VL - 41
SP - 713
EP - 752
JO - Demographic Research
JF - Demographic Research
M1 - 25
ER -