Bias-Motivated Violence and Infant Health

We link over 650,000 birth records in Los Angeles County (2014–2020) to a novel database of hate crimes and estimate effects of ZIP code–level exposure—the most granular community definition to date—using fixed-effects models. Hate crime exposure increases preterm birth risk, with the strongest effects for incidents targeting the mother’s own racial/ethnic group. Among Black and Asian populations, race-specific hate crimes elevate preterm birth risk, while incidents targeting other groups do not, underscoring identity-based vicarious threat. Counterfactual decomposition analysis shows that Black infants are both disproportionately exposed to anti-Black hate crimes and especially vulnerable to their effects, compounding infant health disparities.