Cambridge Journals Online

Race and Pregnancy Outcomes in the Twentieth Century: A Long-Term Comparison

DORA L. COSTA a1 a1 Professor, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142, and Research Associate, NBER. E-mail: costa@mit.edu.

Article author query costa dl

Abstract

Untreated syphilis explained one-third of the higher prematurity rates of black relative to white babies born at Johns Hopkins in the early twentieth century. Differences in prematurity rates explained 41 percent of the black-white stillbirth gap and one-quarter of the black-white birth weight gap. Black babies had lower mortality and higher weight gain than white babies during the first ten days of life spent in the hospital because of higher black breast-feeding rates. Historically low birth weights may have a long reach: in 1988 maternal birth weight accounted for 5–8 percent of the gap in black-white birth weights.