Births to Parents with Asian Origins in the United States, 1992-2012.
Despite a remarkable increase in Asian births in the U.S., studies on their birth outcomes have been lacking. We investigated outcomes of births to Asian parents and biracial Asian/White parents in the U.S. From the U.S. birth data (1992-2012), we selected singleton births to Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Asian Indian, and Vietnamese. These births were divided into three groups; births to White mother/Asian father, Asian mother/White father, and births to the both ethnic Asian parents. We compared birth outcomes of these 18 subgroups to those of the White mother/White father group. Mean birthweights of births to the Asian parents were significantly lower, ranging 18 g to 295 g less than to the White parents. Compared to the rates of low birthweight (LBW) (4.6%) and preterm birth (PTB) (8.5%) in births to the White parents, births to Filipino parents had the highest rates of LBW (8.0%) and PTB (11.3%), respectively, and births to Korean parents had the lowest rates of both LBW (3.7%) and PTB (5.5%). This pattern of outcomes had changed little with adjustments of maternal sociodemographic and health factors. This observation was similarly noted also in births to the biracial parents, but the impact of paternal or maternal race on birth outcome was different by race/ethnicity. Compared to births to White parents, birth outcomes from the Asian parents or biracial Asian/White parents differed depending on the ethnic origin of Asian parents. The race/ethnicity was the strongest factor for this difference while other parental characteristics hardly explained this difference.
Department of Pediatrics, Dongguk University Ilsan Hospital, Goyang, Korea.
Do Hyun
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5003-8475
DH
Kim
Department of Pediatrics, CHA Gangnam Medical Center, CHA University, Seoul, Korea. g-daughter@hanmail.net.
Jihyun
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4512-2728
J
Jeon
Department of Pediatrics, University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, Chicago, CA, USA.
Chang Gi
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3366-4279
CG
Park
Department of Pediatrics, University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, Chicago, CA, USA.
Sudhir
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1496-5108
S
Sriram
Department of Pediatrics, University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, Chicago, CA, USA.
Kwang Sun
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2932-0836
KS
Lee
D044466:Asian People / Q000208:ethnology; D001724:Birth Weight; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D007230:Infant, Low Birth Weight; D050498:Live Birth / Q000523:psychology*; D016017:Odds Ratio; D010290:Parents; D047928:Premature Birth; D012306:Risk; D014481:United States; D044465:White People / Q000208:ethnology
Asian Americans; Low Birthweight; Preterm Birth