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. 2008 Nov 21;169(3):294–303. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwn308

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American Journal of Epidemiology © 2008 The Authors

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Figure 1. — Characteristic changes in mortality with respect to changes in birth weight based on the Wilcox-Russell “causality” theory (7, 13–16), New York State, 1985–1988. A) No indirect effect, shift in birth weight (bold lines, solid to dashed) and corresponding shift in birth-weight-specific mortality curve (thin lines, solid to dashed), no overall change in infant mortality. B) No indirect effect plus a direct effect, shift in birth weight (bold lines, solid to dashed) and corresponding shift in birth-weight-specific mortality curve (thin lines, solid to dashed), no overall change in infant mortality due to shift in birth weight but direct effect increases mortality at all birth weights and overall. C) Indirect effect but no direct effect, shift in birth weight (bold lines, solid to dashed) not identical to the shift in birth-weight-specific mortality curve (thin lines, solid to dashed), infant mortally changes due to shift in birth weight. Only the graph in part C suggests that birth weight lies within the “causal” pathway. See Wilcox (14) for details.