Residential segregation and birth weight among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States.

Racial and ethnic minorities are often residentially segregated from whites in urban settings, a fact which has important health consequences. Research on the relationship between residential segregation and health outcomes lacks national-level investigation of racial and ethnic minority groups other than African Americans. I use multilevel analyses to examine the associations of residential isolation and clustering with birth weight among Asian, black, and Latino Americans using data from the National Center for Health Statistics' Natality Files and the U.S. Census. Findings indicate that segregation has a negative effect on the likelihood of having a low birth weight baby among Asian Americans, suggesting a possible concentration of social and structural resources in highly-segregated communities. On the contrary, segregation marginally increases the odds of low birth weight among African Americans, but only in the presence of higher poverty rates. Segregation does not affect birth weight among Latino Americans.