Life Course Contexts and Racial Birth Outcome Disparities

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorKimbro, Rachel Ten_US
dc.creatorFreeman Cenegy, Lauraen_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-12-06T19:37:12Zen_US
dc.date.created2021-12en_US
dc.date.issued2021-12-03en_US
dc.date.submittedDecember 2021en_US
dc.date.updated2021-12-06T19:37:12Zen_US
dc.description.abstractABSTRACT Life Course Contexts and Racial Birth Outcome Disparities by Laura Freeman Cenegy This dissertation investigates one of the most heavily researched, yet poorly understood, manifestations of racial health inequality in the U.S., the black-white gap in infant health at birth. I examine the ways in which life course family and contextual circumstances come together to produce far reaching negative influences on African American women’s reproductive health and the life chances of their children. In three separate, but related chapters, I pose different questions about how the contextual environments in which African American women grow up contributes to their infants’ disproportionate risk of poor health, as indicated by their weight at birth (< 5 ½ lbs.). The history and present day realities of racial residential segregation mean that, by and large, African American and white women have grown up in different neighborhoods with different resources and advantages in ways that have not been accounted for in the research to date. To address this, I use longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked with tract-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau to examine the life course contextual precursors to this important intergenerational health problem. The results indicate that the two-fold excess incidence of low birth weight among African Americans is largely attributable to their cumulative life course exposure to high poverty and majority black neighborhoods. Poor neighborhoods pose similar risks to white mothers’ infant birth weight outcomes, but their overall exposure to neighborhood poverty is quite limited compared to African American mothers. In fact, one important insight from this research is that white women coming of age from the 1970s to the present have had very little exposure to neighborhoods that were not overwhelming white and nonpoor, whereas black women’s experiences prior to childbearing have been far more diverse and characterized by a range of exposures to different racial and poverty contexts. These findings collectively underscore the need to longitudinally examine the lifecourse origins of maternal and infant health and racial inequalities in health more broadly.en_US
dc.embargo.lift2023-12-01en_US
dc.embargo.terms2023-12-01en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationFreeman Cenegy, Laura. "Life Course Contexts and Racial Birth Outcome Disparities." (2021) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111739">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111739</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/111739en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectracial birth outcome disparitiesen_US
dc.subjectlife courseen_US
dc.subjectneighborhoodsen_US
dc.subjectsegregationen_US
dc.subjectpovertyen_US
dc.subjectlow birth weighten_US
dc.subjecthealth disparitiesen_US
dc.titleLife Course Contexts and Racial Birth Outcome Disparitiesen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentSociologyen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineSocial Sciencesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
FREEMANCENEGY-DOCUMENT-2021.pdf
Size:
7.13 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt
Size:
5.85 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
2.61 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
Collections
Rice University Theses and Dissertations