Metropolitan Residential Segregation and Very Preterm Birth among Black and Hispanic Mothers

Marcus Britton, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
Heeju Shin, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

Prior research suggests that metropolitan residential segregation is positively associated with poor birth outcomes among black mothers. Place stratification theory posits that exposure to neighborhood poverty mediates this association. Little prior research has examined this relationship among Hispanic women, despite similar poverty rates and increasingly similar levels of segregation among Hispanics and black residents of U.S. metropolitan areas. In this study, data from on 467,281 births to black mother and 792,920 to Hispanic mothers in over 200 metropolitan areas are analyzed in order to measure the association between one dimension of segregation, residential isolation, and very preterm birth. Preliminary results from multilevel logistic regression models suggest that residential isolation is positively associated with very preterm birth among both black and Hispanic mothers, net of individual- and metropolitan-level controls.