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Purpose: Previous research suggests that job loss in a household during pregnancy may perturb fetal growth. However, this work often cannot rule out unmeasured confounding due to selection into job loss. Recent work using data on exogenous job loss (due to a plant closure) finds that a father's unexpected job loss during his spouse's pregnancy increases the risk of a low weight birth. Using a unique set of linked registries in Denmark, we build on this work and examine whether associations between a father's unexpected job loss and low birthweight differ by trimester of in utero exposure. We additionally examine trimester-specific associations of job loss with small-for-gestational-age, a proxy for restricted fetal growth, which may cause low birthweight.Methods: We apply a sibling control design to over 1.4 million live births in Denmark, 1980 to 2017, to examine whether this plausibly exogenous form of job loss corresponds with increased risk of low weight or small-for-gestational-age births, depending on the timing of displacement in the first, second, or third trimester.Results: Results indicate an elevated risk of low birthweight (OR = 1.80, 95% CI: 1.24, 2.62) and small-for-gestational-age (OR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.02, 1.93) among gestations exposed to job loss in the second trimester of pregnancy. Sensitivity analyses using continuous outcome measures (e.g., birthweight in grams, birthweight for gestational age percentile) and maternal fixed effects analyses produce substantively similar inference.Conclusions: Findings support the notion that unexpected job loss may affect fetal growth and that the second trimester in particular appears sensitive to this external stressor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global urbanization has sparked substantial environmental, public health, and social science research on the importance of conserving and propagating natural environments. A large subset of this work focuses on the benefits of green space for health. An often-overlooked methodological concern when examining relations between green space and health, however, involves residential self-selection. The selective movement of individuals into greener neighborhoods on the basis of preexisting health and correlated social factors may bias associations, particularly in cross-sectional studies, which predominate existing green space/health research. To quantify the extent of residential self-selection bias, this study used a longitudinal sibling comparison design with repeated individual and neighborhood measures to estimate associations between pre-move health factors, including maternal body mass index (BMI) and infant birthweight, and post-move neighborhood green space in a residentially mobile sample of mothers in California, 2007 to 2015 (n = 288,333). Results show that better health before moving predicted higher levels of neighborhood green space after moving, providing evidence of health selection. Findings also indicate some support for differential health selection into neighborhood green space by race/ethnicity, including that evidence of selection emerges for white and Hispanic, but not Black, mothers. However, weak relations between pre-move individual factors and post-move neighborhood green space across analyses suggest that potential bias due to residential self-selection appears relatively minimal in a large, diverse, and highly mobile sample of families in California. Findings support calls to increase green space in historically marginalized neighborhoods as a means to promote environmental and health equity. • Greenspace-health research relies on cross-sectional designs susceptible to bias. • Study examines role of pre-move health on post-move greenspace among mothers. • Finds evidence of health selection into greenspace, stronger for White mothers. • Weak associations indicate minimal bias due to health selection in study population. • Suggest contextual and selection effects involved in greenspace-health associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial research documents health consequences of neighborhood disadvantage. Patterns of residential mobility that differ by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) may sort non-Hispanic (NH) Black and low-SES families into disadvantaged neighborhoods. In this study, we leverage a sibling-linked dataset to track residential mobility among birthing persons between pregnancies and investigate baseline characteristics associated with downward mobility, including race/ethnicity, SES, and pre-existing health conditions. We used a probabilistic linkage strategy to identify births to the same person between 2007 and 2015 (n = 624,222) and categorized downward residential mobility by quartile-level increases in neighborhood disadvantage. We defined strong downward mobility as a move from a neighborhood with very low (quartile 1) to very high (quartile 4) disadvantage and estimated the logit (i.e., log-odds) of strong downward mobility as a function of racial/ethnic, sociodemographic, and health characteristics of the birthing person and their first birth. We further explored the role of neighborhood housing affordability by examining changes in affordability from first to second birth by race/ethnicity. NH Black birthing persons show an over three-fold increased odds of strong downward mobility relative to NH white birthing persons (OR = 3.34, CI: 2.91, 3.84). To a lesser extent, Hispanic race/ethnicity, WIC receipt, low educational attainment, obesity, and infant preterm birth (PTB) also predict strong downward mobility. Examination of changes in neighborhood affordability indicate that over half of NH Black birthing persons move to a more affordable neighborhood, compared to less than a quarter of NH white birthing persons, before the birth of their second child. Results remain consistent across outcomes, measures of neighborhood SES, and modified log-Poisson models. We find an elevated risk of strong downward mobility among NH Black and low-SES birthing persons. Future research may identify other factors (e.g., housing affordability) that generate downward residential mobility to identify interventions that promote neighborhood equity. • Longitudinal study of residential mobility among more than 600,000 birthing persons. • Black birthing persons show an elevated risk of downward mobility between births. • Neighborhood affordability may generate different racial-ethnic mobility patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work reports an inverse association between neighborhood greenness and obesity. Limitations of this work, which relies largely on cross-sectional data, include that studies often lack control for unmeasured genetic and sociodemographic factors that may confound associations, and cannot disentangle temporal order between neighborhood greenness and obesity. We move beyond a cross-sectional approach and leverage a longitudinal sibling-linked dataset with health, residential, and demographic information on women with two births in California between 2007 and 2015 (N = 552,929). We used a sibling comparison design to control for unmeasured stable characteristics of women and tested whether a positive change in neighborhood greenness (i.e., "upward green mobility") precedes a reduction in obesity risk. Models also adjusted for baseline obesity risk and time-varying individual- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic factors. As hypothesized, we find that upward green mobility varies inversely with the odds of obesity. Results indicate that small decreases in neighborhood greenness may also show protective associations with obesity risk. Our findings, if replicated, suggest that changing levels (particularly increases) of greenness in the residential environment may combat the rise of obesity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Much cross-sectional work reports an association between neighborhood disadvantage and adverse birth outcomes. Limitations of this work include that mothers with pre-existing unmeasured morbidity may "select" into, or out of, certain neighborhoods. This selection issue remains a key rival explanation for work concerned with place-based disparities in birth outcomes. We move beyond a cross-sectional approach and exploit a sibling-linked data set in California to test whether upwardly mobile mothers, who move from a very high to a very low disadvantaged neighborhood, exhibit a lower than expected risk of preterm birth (PTB) (i.e., delivery <37 weeks).Methods: We used a matched-sibling design for 461,061 sibling pairs (i.e., 922,122 births total) to mothers in urban areas in who gave birth in California from 2005 to 2010. We linked mother's address at two time points (i.e., two sibling birth dates) to a census-derived composite indicator of neighborhood disadvantage. Conditional logistic regression methods controlled for mother's risk of PTB in the sibling delivered before the move when estimating the relation between strong upward mobility and preterm of the subsequent birth after the move.Results: As hypothesized, strong upward mobility (relative to no mobility) varies inversely with the odds of PTB of the second sibling (odds ratio [OR] for PTB = 0.83, 95% confidence interval: 0.74, 0.93).Conclusions: Mothers moving from very high to very low disadvantaged neighborhoods show a reduced odds of PTB. Our findings, if replicated, raise the possibility that improvements in neighborhood quality may improve perinatal health in a relatively short time span. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]