Paternal race/ethnicity and birth outcomes.

• Autores: Sai Ma
• Localización: American journal of public health, ISSN 0090-0036, Vol. 98, Nº. 12, 2008, págs. 2285-2292
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Objectives: I sought to identify whether there were associations between paternal race/ethnicity and birth outcomes among infants with parents of same- and mixed-races/ethnicities.; Methods: Using the National Center for Health Statistics 2001 linked birth and infant death file, I compared birth outcomes of infants of White mothers and fathers of different races/ethnicities by matching and weighting racial/ethnic groups following a propensity scoring approach so other characteristics were distributed identically. I applied the same analysis to infants of Black parents and infants with a Black mother and White father.; Results: Variation in risk factors and outcomes was found in infants of White mothers by paternal race/ethnicity. After propensity score weighting, the disparities in outcomes by paternal or parental race/ethnicity could be largely attributed to nonracial parental characteristics. Infants whose paternal race/ethnicity was unreported on their birth certificates had the worst outcomes.; Conclusions: The use of maternal race/ethnicity to refer to infant race/ethnicity in research is problematic. The effects of maternal race/ethnicity on birth outcomes are estimated to be much larger than that of paternal race/ethnicity after I controlled for all covariates. Not listing a father on the birth certificate had a strong association with outcomes, which might be a source of bias in existing data and a marker for identifying infants at risk.;