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Paternal race/ethnicity and birth outcomes

Sai Ma1

  • 1Pardee Rand Graduate School, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA. sma@jhsph.edu

American Journal of Public Health
|May 1, 2008
PubMed

Insights

Paternal race/ethnicity has a smaller impact on infant birth outcomes than maternal race/ethnicity. Non-racial factors and unreported paternal information significantly influence disparities in infant health.

Area of Science:

  • Reproductive Health
  • Perinatal Epidemiology
  • Sociodemographic Factors in Health

Background:

  • Maternal race/ethnicity is often used as a proxy for infant race/ethnicity in research.
  • Existing research may overlook the independent contributions of paternal race/ethnicity to birth outcomes.
  • Understanding the interplay of parental race/ethnicity is crucial for addressing health disparities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the association between paternal race/ethnicity and infant birth outcomes.
  • To compare outcomes among infants of same-race/ethnicity parents versus mixed-race/ethnicity parents.
  • To determine if disparities attributed to race/ethnicity are confounded by other parental characteristics.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the 2001 National Center for Health Statistics linked birth and infant death file.
  • Employed propensity score matching and weighting to control for confounding variables.
  • Analyzed birth outcomes stratified by maternal race/ethnicity and paternal race/ethnicity.

Main Results:

  • Significant variations in birth outcomes were observed based on paternal race/ethnicity among infants with White mothers.
  • Propensity score weighting indicated that non-racial parental characteristics largely explained racial/ethnic disparities.
  • Infants with unreported paternal race/ethnicity exhibited the poorest birth outcomes.

Conclusions:

  • Relying solely on maternal race/ethnicity to represent infant race/ethnicity in research is methodologically flawed.
  • Maternal race/ethnicity demonstrated a larger estimated effect on birth outcomes compared to paternal race/ethnicity after covariate adjustment.
  • Unreported paternal information on birth certificates is a potential source of bias and a marker for identifying at-risk infants.
Abstract

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