Neighborhood-Level Poverty at Menarche and Prepregnancy Obesity in African-American Women

Table 1

Participant characteristics by prepregnancy BMI category (); data are mean ± standard deviation or (%).

Characteristic	Under/normal weight	Overweight	Obese	P
	50 (34.7%)	35 (24.3%)	59 (41.0%)
Age at menarche (years)	12.7 ± 1.6	12.2 ± 2.0	12.0 ± 1.7	0.111
Time since menarche (years)	10.9 ± 5.0	13.9 ± 5.9	17.4 ± 5.5	<0.001
Age at study visit (years)	23.6 ± 4.7	26.1 ± 5.8	29.4 ± 5.6	<0.001
Married/living as married	8 (16.0%)	8 (22.9%)	23 (39.0%)	0.022
Maternal education (years)	12.6 ± 1.4	13.3 ± 1.9	13.0 ± 1.7	0.128
Parity	0.4 ± 0.6	0.9 ± 1.2	1.3 ± 1.2	<0.001
Nulliparous	32 (64.0%)	19 (54.3%)	17 (28.8%)	0.001
Grandmother’s education (years)	13.3 ± 2.0	12.7 ± 2.4	13.2 ± 2.1	0.700
Neighborhood-level poverty at menarche (%)	24 ± 13	26 ± 14	30 ± 13	0.054
Quartiles of neighborhood-level poverty at menarche				0.320
Quartile 1	16 (32.0%)	9 (26.5%)	10 (17.0%)
Quartile 2	12 (24.0%)	11 (32.4%)	13 (22.0%)
Quartile 3	13 (26.0%)	7 (20.6%)	16 (27.1%)
Quartile 4	9 (18.0%)	7 (20.6%)	20 (33.9%)
Current neighborhood-level poverty (%)	27 ± 14	25 ± 15	31 ± 15	0.170
Quartiles of current neighborhood-level poverty				0.639
Quartile 1	12 (24.0%)	11 (32.4%)	12 (20.7%)
Quartile 2	16 (32.0%)	8 (23.5%)	12 (20.7%)
Quartile 3	12 (24.0%)	7 (20.6%)	18 (31.0%)
Quartile 4	10 (20.0%)	8 (23.5%)	16 (27.6%)

8 women missing grandmother’s education.
Quartile 1: 3.4–14%; Quartile 2: ≥14–29%; Quartile 3: ≥29–38%; Quartile 4: ≥38%.
Quartile 1: 0.8–14%; Quartile 2: ≥14–29%; Quartile 3: ≥29–40%; Quartile 4: ≥40%.