Maternal smoking has been found to adversely affect birth outcomes, such as increasing the odds of having low birth weight infants. However, the mechanisms explaining how a mother’s smoking is linked to a child’s low birth weight status are underexplored. This study merged two nationally representative datasets in the United States (US)—the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult (NLSYCYA)—to examine whether maternal weight status before pregnancy serves as a biological mechanism. We applied a recently developed mediation analysis technique to a data sample of 6550 mother–child pairs, and we compared the estimated coefficients across nested probability models. We found that maternal body mass index (BMI) (in kg/m2), a widely used measure of weight status, reduces the odds of delivering a low birth weight infant, and this mechanism explains about 10.2% of the adverse impact of maternal smoking on having a low birth weight child. Moreover, when categorizing maternal pre-pregnancy BMI into four weight statuses (i.e., underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese), we found that, in contrast to mothers with normal weight status, underweight mothers are 70% more likely to have a low birth weight child. Our findings suggest that maternal weight status plays a role in understanding how maternal smoking affects low birth weight outcome, indicating that maintaining a proper weight status for women who plan to give birth may be a possible policy to promote infant health.
随着全球高等教育规模的不断扩张,家庭第一代大学生问题逐渐成为国际教育研究的重要议题。基于2001—2020年Web of Science核心合集数据库中相关文献的计量分析结果显示,该领域研究热点涵盖理论模型、大学经历、影响因素、支持策略四大主题;研究前沿经历了从关注家庭第一代大学生的特殊性,到侧重于探究背后的影响因素和解决策略的转变。我国需要在结合特有国情的基础上,开展理论研究、比较研究和支持体系研究,从而切实改进我国家庭第一代大学生的学习体验,提升本科教育质量。 相似文献