Father’s Lifetime Socioeconomic Status, Small for Gestational Age Infants, and Infant Mortality: A Population-Based Study

Objective: To ascertain the association between father’s lifetime socioeconomic status (SES) and rates of small for gestational age (SGA, defined as weight for gestational age <10th percentile) and infant mortality (defined as <365 days).Methods: The study sample was limited to the singleton births of African American (n=8,331), non-Latina White (n=18,200), and Latina (n=2,637) women. Strati­fied and multilevel, multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted on the Illinois transgenerational dataset of infants (1989-1991) and their Chicago-born par­ents (1956-1976) with appended US census income data (n=29,168). The median fam­ily income of father’s census tract residence during childhood and parenthood were used to assess lifetime SES.Results: Births (n=8,113) to fathers with a lifetime low SES had a SGA rate of 13.3% compared with 6.6% for those (n=10,329) born to fathers with a lifetime high SES, RR = 1.97 (1.79, 2.17). The infant mortality rate of births to fathers with a lifetime low SES exceeded that of infant mortality rate of births to fathers with a lifetime high SES: 13/1,000 vs 5/1,000, respectively; RR = 2.71 (1.94, 3.77). The adjusted (controlling for mother’s age, education, marital status, and race/ethnicity) OR of SGA for fathers with childhood, parenthood, and lifetime low (vs high) SES were 1.15 (1.01, 1.31), 1.13 (1.02, 1.26), and 1.19 (1.05, 1.34), respectively. The adjusted OR of infant mor­tality for births to fathers with childhood, parenthood, and lifetime low (vs high) SES were 1.14 (.78, 1.67), 1.40 (.90, 2.18), and 1.31 (.90, 1.92), respectively.Conclusions: Low paternal socioeconomic status is a previously unrecognized determi­nant of SGA birth regardless of mother’s de­mographic status.Ethn Dis. 2019;29(1):9-16; doi:10.18865/ed.29.1.9