| Abstrakt: |
Prior research demonstrates that married women in the US exhibit better infant health outcomes than cohabiting or single women but very little work has examined potential mechanisms through which this 'marriage advantage' operates. Using population-level data from the female subsample of the National Survey of Family Growth (Cycle 7), this study examines three potential explanations: a life course approach (women's family background contribute both to marriage behavior and infant health risk), selection (mother's unobserved characteristics contribute to both of these factors), and mediation (marriage leads to positive prenatal characteristics which in turn lead to better infant health). Findings indicate that the marriage advantage for one indicator of infant health (birth weight) is diminished but not eradicated with the inclusion of family background characteristics. Subsequent exploration using fixed-effects models demonstrates the salience of the marriage advantage between married and single women but no difference between married and cohabiting women. The married-single disparity is partially explained by increased rates of prenatal smoking among single women. Results for two other measures of infant health--low birth weight and preterm birth--indicate no evidence of the marriage advantage within a fixed-effects framework. In sum, the results provide new insights into how an important population health problem operates across the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
