Social
Relationships between the length of exposure to state-level eviction moratoria and birthweight among Medicaid and uninsured birthing people 2020-2021 Kaitlyn Stanhope* Kaitlyn Stanhope Sara Markowitz Michael R Kramer
Introduction: Limited data exists on how housing policies may impact outcomes for birthing people. In March and April 2020, 43 states implemented eviction moratoria. Our goal was to estimate associations between the length of exposure to moratoria and birthweight among Medicaid/uninsured people conceiving in March-May 2020 and giving birth to a live born infant.
Methods: We used data from United States natality files, 2020-2021. We defined the exposure as the number of months for which the individual was exposed to a state-level eviction moratoria, categorized as 0 (referent, no state-level moratoria), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more. We estimated differences in birth weight in grams and 95% confidence intervals using quantile regression with generalized estimated equations. We included individual (age, parity, race, ethnicity, likely single parenthood), county (rurality), and state-level covariates (unemployment, poverty, median household income, governor’s party affiliation, Medicaid expansion, COVID-19 death rate through July 2020) as potential confounders.
Results: We included 376,622 births. The results of the quantile regression show a pattern of stronger associations between eviction moratoria length and birthweight in the lower and upper tails of the birthweight distribution (Figure 2). In states with a moratorium of five or more months, the 5th and 10th quantiles were 45.8, 95% CI: (9.1, 82.5) and 25.8, 95% CI: (0.5, 51.1) grams higher than states who never implemented a moratorium. At the higher end, the 90th and 95th quantiles were 28.5, 95% CI: (4.3, 52.7) and 28.1, 95% CI: (5, 51.1), respectively. The pattern was similar for moratoria of four months. There were no meaningful associations for moratoria of one to three months.
Conclusions: People birthing in states with longer moratoria in place had higher birth weight, with gains concentrated on the extremes of the birth weight spectrum, independent of the economic and political climate of the state.
