Does Maternal Country of Birth Matter for Understanding Offspring’s Birthweight? A Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity in Sweden
Background Many public health and epidemiological studies have found differences between populations (e.g. maternal countries of birth) in average values of a health indicator (e.g. mean offspring birthweight). However, the approach based solely on population-level averages compromises our understanding of variability in individuals’ health around the averages. If this variability is high, the ex