Do maternal and paternal characteristics perform similar roles in adverse pregnanacy outcome and infant survival?

Abstract

This paper is concemed with the relationship between late fetal or infant death and the following factors: matemal and patemal educational attainment, mother's and father's age, childs birth order, and sex. Maturity (combination ofbirth weight and duration of gestation) as intervening factors or proximate causes link social factors to fetal-infant mortality. Logistic regression has been used in order to measure the impact of individual explanatory factors on the probability of late fetal or infant death and also to control effects of all the variables. During the late fetal period, not only maturity ofachild is a key predictor, but also the role ofmatemal and patemal age and to a lesser extent of mother' s education is significant. Neonatal mortality depends primarily on birth weightlduration of gestation and child sex that was surprisingly considered to be unimportant in the late fetal period. Social determinants of child survival minimally apparent in the late fetal age markedly emerge during the postneonatal period.