Low Birthweight – Mothers 40 Years of Age and Older

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Abstract

This age group of mothers has tendency towards higher proportions (often 8.0% and over) of low birthweight babies. On this map only the cities are represented because there is a low number of women in this group in rural and remote areas and hence the data has been suppressed due to reasons of confidentiality.

Low birthweight (LBW) is a health status indicator, and is defined as babies born with weight under 2500 grams. The proportion of low birthweight babies born to mothers 15 years of age and older indicates the health and well-being of a population. Health status refers to the state of health of a person or group, and measures causes of sickness and death. It can also include people’s assessment of their own health.

This map might well be regarded as a location map for Canada's largest cities or highly urbanized areas. This does not necessarily mean that high LBW rates for older mothers and urbanization are coincident. Rather, this is an artifact of the computing process which excluded census divisions (CDs) with insufficient numbers of births. Despite this limitation, the spatial pattern again reveals that this age group of mothers has a tendency towards higher proportions (often 8.0% and over) of LBW babies - very similar to that of teen mothers. The highest LBW rates for babies born to this age-grouping of women occur predominantly in Ontario.