• Posted October 28, 2024

Having a Preemie Baby Can Harm Job Prospects, Income

The health problems of preemie babies cause untold heartache for new parents.

But these families also face a strained financial future, a new study finds.

About 30% of parents with a very low birth weight baby, under 3.3 pounds, have had to make serious decisions about their employment and career based on their child’s health, researchers discovered.

Having a preterm baby often forces parents to consider leaving their job, a decision that typically affects health insurance coverage and can reset the cap on their annual out-of-pocket costs, researchers said.

"The lower the child's birth weight, the more likely a parent was to make one of these decisions," said lead researcher Dr. Erin Von Klein, a neonatology fellow at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

"Of parents with a very low birth weight baby, 20% had one parent who left the workforce altogether due to their child’s health care needs," Von Klein noted.

Even having a low birth weight baby -- 3.3 to 5.5 pounds -- can trigger economic ramifications, researchers found.

About 20% of parents with a low birth weight baby made an employment decision based on their child’s health, results show.

By comparison, only 13% of parents with a baby born at term made some sort of decision regarding employment, researchers said.

The new study was published Oct. 28 in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Von Klein said she undertook this study based on her experience in a neonatal intensive care unit.

“I noticed so many parents were either leaving the workforce, quitting graduate school or not finishing college when their infant received a diagnosis of medical complexity,” Von Klein explained. “Often people have children before they are in their economic prime, so if their baby has a lifelong medical complexity, the parents fall behind in the workforce, which impacts their health and their children over a lifetime.”

More information

The American Academy of Pediatrics has more on the health issues of premature babies.

SOURCE: Vanderbilt University, news release, Oct. 28, 2024