TABLE 3.
Effects of Low Birth Weight and Childhood Socioeconomic Factors on Disease Onset: Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1968–2007
| Risk Factor | Asthma, HR (95% CI) | Hypertension, HR (95% CI) | Diabetes, HR (95% CI) | Stroke, Heart Attack, or Heart Disease, HR (95% CI) |
| Low birth weight (< 5.5 lb) | 2.09*** (1.22, 3.57) | 1.74*** (1.22, 2.49) | 1.88** (1.13, 3.11) | 1.94** (1.03, 3.67) |
| Grew up in poverty | 0.91 (0.55, 1.49) | 1.31* (0.97, 1.78) | 1.47* (0.96, 2.23) | 0.64 (0.38, 1.08) |
| Father's education | ||||
| High school dropout (Ref) | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| High school degree | 0.43*** (0.27, 0.70) | 0.89 (0.65, 1.22) | 1.04 (0.70, 1.56) | 0.84 (0.51, 1.40) |
| At least some college | 0.80 (0.49, 1.28) | 0.62** (0.42, 0.91) | 0.53** (0.29, 0.95) | 0.74 (0.39, 1.37) |
| Mother's education | ||||
| High school dropout (Ref) | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| High school degree | 1.49 (0.98, 2.26) | 0.91 (0.66, 1.24) | 0.68* (0.47, 1.00) | 1.14 (0.65, 1.99) |
| At least some college | 1.31 (0.71, 2.43) | 1.15 (0.73, 1.82) | 0.89 (0.49, 1.61) | 1.62 (0.83, 3.17) |
| Childhood health insurance, 1968–1972 | ||||
| Private health insurance in all years (Ref) | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| No private health insurance | 0.70 (0.38, 1.29) | 1.17 (0.79, 1.74) | 1.11 (0.65, 1.88) | 1.95* (0.97, 3.94) |
| Intermittent private health insurance | 0.91 (0.60, 1.39) | 1.36** (1.05, 1.76) | 1.12 (0.78, 1.62) | 1.37* (0.85, 2.22) |
| Childhood neighborhood povertya | ||||
| Lived in low-poverty neighborhood (Ref) | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 |
| Lived in medium-poverty neighborhood | 1.32 (0.74, 2.38) | 1.17 (0.79, 1.72) | 1.70** (1.07, 2.70) | 1.24 (0.62, 2.47) |
| Lived in high-poverty neighborhood | 1.31 (0.57, 3.01) | 1.00 (0.61, 1.62) | 0.97 (0.52, 1.83) | 0.81 (0.38, 1.73) |
| Additional childhood neighborhood factorsb | ||||
| High-crime neighborhood | 1.18 (0.81, 1.72) | 1.22* (0.94, 1.58) | 0.92 (0.63, 1.33) | 0.76 (0.46, 1.26) |
| Connectedness to informal sources of help | 0.98 (0.88, 1.10) | 1.06 (0.96, 1.16) | 1.11* (0.98, 1.25) | 0.99 (0.86, 1.14) |
| Plumbing problems | 1.07 (0.66, 1.73) | 0.89 (0.61, 1.30) | 1.88*** (1.18, 3.01) | 1.06 (0.56, 1.99) |
| Housing insulation problems | 1.26 (0.76, 2.08) | 1.01 (0.71, 1.45) | 1.11 (0.67, 1.84) | 1.30 (0.71, 2.38) |
| Parent smoked | 1.31* (0.92, 1.87) | 1.13 (0.86, 1.48) | 1.21 (0.80, 1.84) | 1.19 (0.77, 1.84) |
Note. CI = confidence interval; HR = hazard ratio. All regressions are estimated as competing-risk Cox proportional hazard models to explicitly take into account the competing risk of mortality. All models include controls for gender, race/ethnicity, birth order, mother's age at birth, whether born into 2-parent family, birth year, region of birth, proportion of parent's life between ages 50 and 59 years spent in fair or poor health, parental rate of time preference, and a dummy indicator for missing education of father (coefficients omitted to conserve space). Sample weights are used, and standard errors are clustered at the neighborhood level. For all conditions, the number of families was 1157 and the number of individuals was 2171. The number of person-year observations was as follows: for asthma, 91 259; for hypertension, 90 884; for diabetes, 95 896; for stroke, heart attack, or heart disease, 95 503.
Childhood neighborhood defined as the census tract where the child lived in 1968. High-poverty = > 30% of the people who lived in the neighborhood were in poverty; medium-poverty = 10%–30%; low-poverty = < 10%. We obtained census tract–level poverty information by linking the PSID individual data to US census data for each census tract.
Based on parental report.
*P < .1; **P < .05; ***P < .01.