Volume 41 - Article 25 | Pages 713–752  

Maternal educational attainment and infant mortality in the United States: Does the gradient vary by race/ethnicity and nativity?

By Tiffany Green, Tod Hamilton

Abstract

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.

Author’s Affiliation

• Tiffany Green - Virginia Commonwealth University, United States of America EMAIL
• Tod Hamilton - Princeton University, United States of America EMAIL

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

The role of parenthood and gender in shaping circulation patterns of Ukrainian migration to Poland
Volume 53 - Article 23    | Keywords: circular migration, gender, migration, mobility patterns, parenthood, Poland, Ukraine

Where do we go from here? Partnership-parenthood trajectories of cohabitation as first union during young adulthood in the United States
Volume 53 - Article 9    | Keywords: cohabitation, family inequality, fertility, marriage, race/ethnicity, transition to adulthood, union formation, United States of America

The impact of population heterogeneity on the age trajectory of neonatal mortality: A study of US births 2008–2014
Volume 53 - Article 7    | Keywords: frailty, heterogeneity, heterogeneity, infant mortality, mortality, mortality selection, mortality selection, neonatal mortality, United States of America

Infant mortality among US whites in the 19th century: New evidence from childhood sex ratios
Volume 52 - Article 10    | Keywords: 19th century, economic development, infant mortality, mortality transition, population health, sex ratio

A multidimensional global migration model for use in cohort-component population projections
Volume 51 - Article 11    | Keywords: age dependency, education, international migration, migration, modelling, population projection, projections