Adverse Infant Health Outcomes Increased After the 2016 US Presidential Election Among Non-White US-born and Foreign-born Mothers

Macro-level events such as elec tions can improve or harm pop u la tion health across existing axes of strat i fi ca tion through pol icy changes and sig nals of inclu sion or threat. This study inves ti gates whether rates of, and disparities in, adverse birth out comes between racialized and nativ ity groups changed after Donald Trump's Novem ber 2016 elec tion, a period char ac ter ized by increases in xeno pho bic and rac ist mes sages, pol i cies, and actions in the United States. Using data from 15,568,710 U.S. births between Novem ber 2012 and Novem ber 2018, we find that adverse birth out comes increased after Trump's elec tion among U.S. and for eignborn moth ers racialized as Black, His panic, and Asian and Pacific Islander (API), com pared with the period encompassing the two Obama pres i den cies. Results for Whites sug gest no change or a slight decrease in adverse out comes fol low ing Trump's elec tion, yet this find ing was not robust to checks for seasonality. Black-White, His panic-White, and API-White disparities in adverse birth out comes wid ened among both U.S. and for eignborn moth ers after Trump's elec tion. Our find ings sug gest that Trump's elec tion was a racist and xenophobic macro level polit i cal event that undermined the health of infants born to nonWhite moth ers in the United States.