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Black women born in the United States – whose genetic makeup is about three-fourths African and one-fourth European – give birth to infants weighing, on average, 12 ounces less than infants of white women born in the U.S., according to researchers at the University of Illinois-Chicago and Northwestern University. In contrast, black women who immigrated from West African countries have babies whose average birth weight is less than four ounces below that of white infants.
Researchers Dr. Richard David, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Medicine and a neonatologist at Cook County Hospital, and Dr. James Collins, a neonatologist at Children’s memorial Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Medical School, analyzed more than 90,000 birth certificates of infants born in Illinois between 1980 and 1995. The study involved more than 3,000 births of African women, mostly immigrants from Nigeria and Ghana.
Other researchers have theorized that racial differences in birth weight are genetic. Such a theory would predict that women born in Africa – whose genes are by definition all African – should have the smallest babies.
“We have found the opposite,” says David. “Regardless of socioeconomic status, the infants of black women born in Africa weighed more than the infants of comparable black women born in the U.S.”
“Birth weight is important because small babies are more likely to die, “ David says. “To say race differences in birth weight are genetic is to justify thousands of excess black infant deaths each year, as if this were an unavoidable act of nature. The excess low birth weight among African Americans — and the excess deaths that come with it – are caused by a social system, not by genetics.”
The study found that the incidence of low birth weight (less than five-and-a-half pounds), was 13 percent among infants of U.S.-born black women, seven percent among infants of African-born black women and four percent among infants of U.S.-born white women.
David and Collins suggest that future research on black-white differences in birth outcomes should target social causes, including lifelong exposure to racial discrimination.
