New study disputes commonly held theories about race and infant birth weight

Jet, Nov 17, 1997

A study conducted by a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) researcher and a colleague at Northwestern University challenges the genetic concept of race as it relates to birth weight.

In the study, which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers report that Black women born in the United States whose genetic makeup is about three-fourths African and one-fourth European have infants that weigh an average of 12 ounces less than infants of White women born in the United States. In contrast Black women who immigrated from West African countries have babies whose average birth weight is less than four ounces below that of White infants.

The researchers, Dr. Richard David of UIC and Dr. James Collins of Northwestern University Medical School, analyzed more than 90,000 birth certificates of infants born in Illinois between 1980 and 1995.

Their study found that the incidence of low birth weight (less than five-and-a-half pounds) was 13.2 percent among infants of U.S.-born Black women, 7.1 percent among infants of African-born women and 4.3 percent among infants of U.S. born White women.

More than 3,000 of the births were to African women, mostly immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana, making this study by far the largest analysis to date that specifically looked at the outcomes of infants born to women who immigrate from sub-Saharan Africa to the U.S.

Other medical researchers have theorized that racial differences in birth weight are genetic. A theory such as that would suggest that women born in Africa should have the smallest babies. But David and Collins' study shows just the opposite with infants born to African women weighing more than those infants born to U.S. Black women.

Even in women who were at the lowest risk, U.S.-born Black women still had the highest rate of low birthweight babies.