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Low birth weight hinders health and success in adults
June 6 : Researchers have found how birth weight significantly affects health and success in adults.
The study was conducted by a team of researchers, including Rucker Johnson and Robert Schoeni, at the Universities of California and U-M respectively.
As part of the study, researchers analysed 12,000 individuals from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, conducted since 1968 by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).
The research included data from the original study families, plus their descendants who have formed their own families.
The study’s unique genealogical design allowed the researchers to compare outcomes for siblings to isolate the impact of low birth weight apart from other common family conditions that siblings share.
Researchers found that weighing less than 5.5 pounds at the time of birth may increase a person’s chance of dropping out of high school, can reduces yearly earnings by about 15 percent and can burden people in their 30s and 40s with the health of someone who is 12 years older.
Low birth-weight children, relative to their normal birth-weight siblings, worked 7.4 percent fewer hours in adulthood. These effects of poor infant health persisted, in sibling comparisons, after accounting for the independent effects of birth order, mother’s age at birth, birth year cohort, race/ethnicity, family structure, parental income, and parental fertility timing.
Researchers noted that not only did low income and lack of health insurance during pregnancy increased the likelihood of poor birth outcomes, but limited parental resources also influencing the lasting impacts of poor infant health.
The absence of health insurance during childhood intensifies the negative impact of low birth weight. Additionally, the harmful effects of low birth weight on adult health are 2.7 times larger for those who were uninsured in childhood.
The income effect was much larger for infants who were predisposed to be born low weight because their mothers were themselves born low weight.
“The poor economic status of parents at the time of pregnancy leads to worse birth outcomes for their children. In turn, these negative birth outcomes have harmful effects on the children’s cognitive development, health, and human capital accumulation, and also health and economic status in adulthood. These effects then get passed on to the subsequent generation when the children, who are now adults, have their own children,†the authors wrote. ´
The findings of the study were presented at the National Summit on America’s Children in Washington, D.C. (ANI)
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