From The New York Times news section, an article about childbirths in 21st century California that treats the demographics of the state as much the same as Alabama in 1950: black and white. This is a classic example of how the NYT buries counter-Narrative facts until deep into the article.
For a wealthy country, the United States is a dangerous place to be a newborn. But it is not equally risky for all babies.
New data from California shows that, for every 100,000 births, 173 of the babies born to the richest white mothers die before their first birthday.
By Claire Cain Miller, Sarah Kliff and Larry Buchanan
Produced by Larry Buchanan and Shannon Lin
Feb. 12, 2023
In the United States, the richest mothers and their newborns are the most likely to survive the year after childbirth — except when the family is Black, according to a groundbreaking new study of two million California births. The richest Black mothers and their babies are twice as likely to die as the richest white mothers and their babies.
… But this study is novel because it’s the first of its size to show how the risks of childbirth vary by both race and parental income, and how Black families, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are disproportionately affected. …
The study, published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, includes nearly all the infants born to first-time mothers from 2007 to 2016 in California, the state with the most annual births. For the first time, it combines income tax data with birth, death and hospitalization records and demographic data from the Census Bureau and the Social Security Administration, while protecting identities.
The kind of research pioneered by Harvard economist Raj Chetty.
That approach also reveals that premature infants born to poor parents are more likely to die than those born into the richest families. Yet there is one group that doesn’t gain the same protection from being rich, the study finds: Black mothers and babies.
“It suggests that the well-documented Black–white gap in infant and maternal health that’s been discussed a lot in recent years is not just explained by differences in economic circumstances,” said Maya Rossin-Slater, an economist studying health policy at Stanford and an author of the study. “It suggests it’s much more structural.”…
Perhaps unexpectedly, babies born to the richest 20 percent of families are the least healthy, the study finds. They are more likely to be born premature and at a low birth weight, two key risk factors for medical complications early in life. This is because their mothers are more likely to be older and to have twins (which are more common with the use of fertility treatments), the researchers found.
But even with those early risk factors, these babies are the most likely to survive both their first month and first year of life.
A similar pattern emerged when it came to the health of the parents themselves: Rich and poor mothers were equally likely to have high-risk pregnancies, but the poor mothers were three times as likely to die — even within the same hospitals. Rich women’s pregnancies “are not only the riskiest, but also the most protected,” the paper’s authors wrote. …
Money Protects White Mothers and Babies. It Doesn’t Protect Black Ones.
The researchers found that maternal mortality rates were just as high among the highest-income Black women as among low-income white women. Infant mortality rates between the two groups were also similar.
The babies born to the richest Black women (the top tenth of earners) tended to have more risk factors, including being born premature or underweight, than those born to the richest white mothers — and more than those born to the poorest white mothers. It’s evidence that the harm to Black mothers and their babies, regardless of socioeconomic status, begins before childbirth.
“As a Black infant, you’re starting off with worse health, even those born into these wealthy families,” said Sarah Miller, a health economist at the University of Michigan. …
Finally, in the 17th paragraph:
Black mothers and babies had worse outcomes than those who were Hispanic, Asian or white in all the health measures the researchers looked at…
Of all live births in California during 2018-2020 (average), 46.1% were Hispanic, 28.8% were white, 5.6% were black, 0.4% were American Indian/Alaska Native and 15.9% were Asian/Pacific Islander.
Then The New York Times runs a graph showing the four races after its earlier graph showed just black and white:
Asians have the lowest infant mortality rates of all, and Hispanics are quite good.
… The new study demonstrates that disparities are not explained by income, age, marital status or country of birth. Rather, by showing that even rich Black mothers and babies have a disproportionately higher risk of death, the data suggests broader forces at play in the lives of Black mothers, Professor Rossin-Slater said.
“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.
Huh?
That’s basically backward logic: We’ve shown that all the Nurture factors don’t account for the gap, so that proves that Nature doesn’t matter.
Of course, there are nurture factors that aren’t mentioned, such as obesity (age 20-39 black women average 20 pounds heavier than white women, who are slightly taller) and venereal diseases.
It’s also possible that blacks evolved slightly differently. For example, the obstetrician’s rule of thumb is that pregnancies last 40 weeks, except among blacks where the duration is 39 weeks. Not surprisingly, black babies are born slightly lighter on average.
One possibility is that blacks evolved to be faster runners with narrower pelvic girdles, which causes pregnancies to last slightly less. But that’s just a SWAG.
“This is about the environments where we live, where we work, where we play, where we sleep.”
There is clear evidence that Black patients experience racism in health care settings. In childbirth, mothers are treated differently and given different access to interventions. Black infants are more likely to survive if their doctors are Black.
That’s because black doctors on average aren’t as good as other doctors, so black doctors get the easy cases and call in white and Asian specialists to deal with the hard cases.
