
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 5, 1990                   TAG: 9006050052
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDY LINKS POVERTY, LATER GENERATIONS

Middle-class black women with college educations are twice as likely to bear low-birth-weight babies as whites of the same income and education, a study found.

The study of more than 100,000 births in Chicago suggests that the effects of poverty linger for generations, the researchers said Monday.

Low birth-weight is the most important predictor of whether babies will die, said the lead researcher, Dr. James W. Collins Jr., who specializes in newborns at Children's Memorial Hospital.

The United States, which ranks 22nd among developed countries in infant survival, is losing its fight to reduce the infant mortality rate, Collins said.

He and a colleague, Dr. Richard J. David of Cook County Hospital, examined 103,072 birth records - about half of them for whites and half for blacks - for the years 1982 and 1983.

They found that low-birth-weight babies - those less than 5 1/2 pounds - were born to blacks at twice the rate they were to whites at virtually every income and educational level.

"If you're middle class and black, despite having education, being of optimal age [to have children] and living in a $20,000 to $30,000-a-year household . . . you still do twice as bad as whites similar to you," Collins said.

The study appears in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The researchers didn't examine specific factors that might have caused the differences, but Collins said he believed nutrition during adolescence may be key.

Collins also said fewer blacks than whites seek prenatal care, even when both can afford it. He cited a study published in November 1988 about 31,000 largely middle-class women in a California health-maintenance organization.

It found that prenatal care could narrow the gap between rates of low-birth-weight babies between blacks and whites, but that blacks sought such care less often.

by CNB