An Epidemiology of Neighborhood Poverty: Causal Factors of Infant Mortality Among Blacks and Whites in the Metropolitan United States*

Abstract

Despite overall declines in infant mortality over the past few decades, racial disparities between blacks and whites have persisted in the United States. This article considers the argument that racial differences in infant mortality are partially the result of the disproportionate concentration of blacks within extremely poor neighborhoods relative to whites. Using race-specific measures of neighborhood-level poverty, combined with metropolitan-wide measures of infant mortality, it was determined that trends in infant mortality for both blacks and whites reflect the impact of an intergenerational effect associated with prolonged exposure to extremely poor neighborhoods. Racial disparities in infant mortality in the early 1980s can be accounted for by black – white differences in neighborhood poverty exposure. Results suggest, however, that black infant mortality during the early 1990s was much more strongly influenced by high-risk natality behaviors among black women than by economic status or neighborhood influences.