CHICAGO -- Babies born smaller than normal tend to have lower incomes as adults but are just as likely as those of normal birth weight to be employed, married and satisfied with their lives, researchers say.
A study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association linked the lower incomes to lower achievement in school, which led to lower-paying, blue-collar jobs.Previous studies have linked low birth weight to problems with brain development in children.
But those studies did not track low birth-weight babies past mid-childhood, said Dr. Richard Strauss, the study's lead researcher and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
The study tracked about 1,000 full-term babies who weighed less than about 5.5 pounds at birth in Britain in 1970. They were examined at ages 10, 16 and 26 and compared with normal-size babies born the same year.
The adults born small earned about 10 percent less, and those who had normal birth weights were twice as likely to become professionals.
At age 26, no differences were seen between the normal and low birth-weight adults in years of education, hours worked, marital status, satisfaction with life and perception of standard of living.
The researchers are "really getting at the issues that parents want to know," said Dr. Marie McCormick, head of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "People think these problems give you a really poor quality of life, but this shows that they don't feel that way.