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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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NYT implies racism is responsible for Black babies dying in childbirth (contrary to the very evidence they present)

https://archive.is/LuD27

Years back there was a popular news item that black babies were more likely to die in delivery than white babies. Intelligent minds disagreed on the cause, and the NYT blamed racism. There was a good discussion in it on the_motte. Newly published research now shows that the wealthiest black women also have high infant mortality rates, which does not trend down as income trends up as it does for whites. More strikingly, and not mentioned in the article but obvious in the graph, the poorest Hispanics have 25% less than the infant mortality of whites, and the poorest Asians have 50% the infant mortality of whites. (Theirs, too, trends down by income).

That’s an extraordinary piece of information: our poorest immigrant populations have wildly low infant mortality rates. Rationally, we should conclude that multigenerational Americans are struggling hard, both white and black. That should be the focus of the article. It’s not. But my takeaway is that the immigrant populations are healthier or (in the case of Hispanics) having younger babies. The idea that racist hospital workers or general ambient racism is selectively allowing black people to die and immigrant babies to thrive is obviously ridiculous when there is no accompanied evidence. Any hypothetical racist structure would harm the recent Chinese and Honduran as much as the African American except for most picky of racists.

There are two possible reasons for the plight of black mothers. The first is that their behaviors are bad. There is some evidence that black behaviors are worse on average, in particular that even the wealthiest black families have higher crime and obesity rates than expected. But it may also be that intelligent black women are being swooped up by corporations at a higher rate, and if they are marrying black men (or becoming single mothers) then they may be the breadwinner of the family. The added stress of being a working mother may lead to the increased infant mortality rate which is not found among white mothers.

Comments below describe some concrete ways you could actually do it, but this quote really stood out to me:

“It’s not race, it’s racism,” said Tiffany L. Green, an economist focused on public health and obstetrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The data are quite clear that this isn’t about biology. This is about the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we sleep.”

If that's the case, then why is the NYT simply refusing to describe or cite any of those data which controlled for biological factors? Instead, every piece of data the NYT shows is controlling for SES or particular hospital. This is absurd to the point of literally being evidence for the opposite of their quote. Controlling for SES probably mostly correlates with things like "the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we sleep". Controlling for particular hospital likely eliminates much room for outright racism in medical treatment. (It is stupidly unlikely that every hospital, or even a large majority, considering the political make-up of their employees, are just blatantly racist. If you look at specific hospitals and some are just atrocious on this score, while others do mostly fine, you can maybe go look to see if there is some racism there, but if everyone basically has similar gaps, it seems implausible.)

They're not even trying to bring data which shows the thing they're claiming it shows. (Obvious disclaimer that a genuine attempt to do this very well may show that racism is a likely explanation. I'm only claiming that this isn't even a genuine attempt.)

Based on the research I did when my wife was pregnant, I came away with the understanding that both this overall fact and the specific causes were fairly well known: gestational diabetes and preeclampsia.

Gestational diabetes is not suspected to be directly racially linked, rather the suspected pathway is black -> (pre-pregnancy obesity, during-pregnancy weight gain) -> gestational diabetes.

Preeclampsia is less understood, but is known to be highly correlated to sickle cell and is theorized to be influenced by sickle cell's recessive form as well. Fibroids (main cause: low vitamin D which has the literal biochemical cause of more melanin -> less vitamin D) are also suspected to play a role.

In any case, if we wanted to actually measure racism as opposed to blame everything for it, the simple way to do so would be to look at the underlying rates of gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. Treatment after getting these conditions is susceptible to racism but actually getting the conditions is not. So high rates of (preeclampsia death / # of people with preeclampsia) might be evidence of racism, but (# of people with preeclampsia / # of pregnancies) would be evidence of bad genetic luck.

Newly published research now shows that the wealthiest black women also have high infant mortality rates, which does not trend down as income trends up as it does for whites

I still fail to understand why social scientists and government researchers treat "white" as the default in a state with the demographics of California.

More strikingly, and not mentioned in the article but obvious in the graph, the poorest Hispanics have 25% less than the infant mortality of whites, and the poorest Asians have 50% the infant mortality of whites. (Theirs, too, trends down by income).

These type of graphs without confidence internals are useless. The odd increase in infant mortality among white mothers going from 10% to 20% income rank suggests low amounts of data.

Any hypothetical racist structure would harm the recent Chinese and Honduran as much as the African American except for most picky of racists.

I see no reason to assume that. It's entirely possible that California is a land where whites, Hispanics and Asians live in harmony oppressing blacks. Not saying it is true, but probably more realistic than the 35% white population somehow oppressing everyone else.

But it may also be that intelligent black women are being swooped up by corporations at a higher rate, and if they are marrying black men

Would be interesting to study this. FWIW, I'd be surprised if the majority of higher income Black women in CA aren't outmarrying.

Here is a possibility: "Induced abortion by vacuum aspiration is associated with an increased risk of first-trimester miscarriage in the subsequent pregnancy.". Furthermore, "women with previous history of two or three induced abortions were at risk of preterm birth, very preterm birth and low birth weight babies in the subsequent pregnancies. The risk of caesarean was found to be increased in women with previous two or three spontaneous abortions exposing the women to the morbidity associated with the C-section."

African American women are more likely to have multiple abortions.

If both these are true, I don't know what else we'd expect. It also might explain why richer African American women have worse outcomes - do wealthier African Americans have more abortions than poorer African American women?

Blacks score lower on virtually all metrics of health, economic wellbeing, achievement etc. except for entertainment industry and sports. Much like how the g-factor correlates unrelated skills, the h-factor, for health, shows blacks doing poorly on a wide range of health metrics. I think the only health outcome in which blacks do better is lower rates of some cancer. Conversely, some Asian ethnicities have much higher incidence of some cancers, like stomach or esophageal. It's not all bad: higher bone density for blacks means lower injury risk due to falls.

They do better at not killing themselves though, or perhaps that's another way of saying that whites and native Americans do worse. I suppose there's an age-related factor in that blacks make up a smaller proportion of the old men who do this, yet I suspect it's more of a political/hbd matter than a purely demographic one.

https://sprc.org/scope/racial-ethnic-disparities

Sure, but the question is why.

Doesn't seem universally true on absolute metrics. Virtually all black Barbados has a life expectancy 4 years higher than California blacks -even though CA has a far higher development level overall.

A good question is why in Britain women of African descent have much higher maternal mortality rates despite having income levels that are basically at parity with White British women while Pakistani & Bangladeshi women who are much poorer have similar levels of maternal mortality compared to White British women.

Don't people with higher levels of sub-saharan African ancestry have shorter pregnancies on average than individuals with lower levels? Could this not be the main explanation? AFAIK pre-term births are quite strongly correlated with infant mortality.

Edit: Just from the abstract, Blacks have shorter pregnancies and a higher rate of pre-term births.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2292982/

But weirdly have lower pre-term mortality? The paper specifically states that black infant mortality surpasses whites only after 37 weeks of gestation. Weird.

Yeah, that part seems weird and I’m wondering if there’s some funky statistics going on.

Seems to me the most likely answer is that the ideal term for blacks is shorter than that for whites. I think that's what that paper is getting at, too.

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