{"id":31097,"date":"2010-12-29T10:37:24","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T15:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=31097"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:29:54","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:29:54","slug":"guest-post-weathering-health-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/12\/29\/guest-post-weathering-health-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Weathering Health Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms.<\/a> and Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>In the early 1990s,\u00a0Arline Geronimus<\/a> proposed a simple yet profound explanation for why\u00a0Black women<\/a> on average were having children at younger ages than White women, which she called the \u201cweathering hypothesis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It goes like this: Racial inequality takes a cumulative toll on Black women, increasing the chance they will have health problems at younger ages. So, early childbearing might pose health risks for White women, but for Black women it makes more sense to start earlier \u2014 before their health declines. Although it\u2019s hard to measure the motivations of people having children, her suggestion was that early childbearing reflected a combination of cumulative cultural wisdom and individual adaptation (for example, reacting to the health problems experienced by their 40-something mothers).<\/p>\n

She\u00a0showed the pattern<\/a> nicely with data from Michigan in 1989, in which the percentage of first births that were \u201cvery low birthweight,\u201d increased with the age of Black women, but decreased for White women, through their twenties:<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: My graph from\u00a0Geronimus (1996)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

If the hypothesis is correct, she reasoned, the pattern would be stronger among poor women, who experience more health problems, which is also what she found.<\/p>\n

The most recent\u00a0national data<\/a>, for 2007, continue to show Black women have their first children, on average, younger than White women: age\u00a022.7 versus 26.0. And the infant mortality rates, by mothers\u2019 age, also show the lowest risk for White women at older ages than for Black women:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: My graph from\u00a0CDC data<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note that, for White women, mothers have children in the early thirties face less than half the infant-mortality risk of those having children as teenagers. For Black women, waiting till their lowest-risk age \u2014 the late 20s \u2014 yields only a 14% reduction in infant mortality risk. So it looks like waiting is much more important for White women, at least as far as health conditions are concerned.<\/p>\n

The implications are profound. If you base your perceptions on the White pattern, it makes sense to discourage early childbearing for health reasons. But if you look at the Black pattern, it becomes more important to try to improve health problems at early ages \u2014 and all the\u00a0things that contribute<\/a> to them \u2014 rather than (or in addition to) trying to delay first births.<\/p>\n

—————————-<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s previous posts featured on SocImages include ones on\u00a0the recession and divorce data<\/a>,\u00a0the relationship between cell phone use and driving deaths<\/a>,\u00a0measuring the number of welfare recipients<\/a>, delusions of gender dimorphism<\/a>, and the\u00a0gender binary in children\u2019s books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms. and Family Inequality. In the early 1990s,\u00a0Arline Geronimus proposed a simple yet profound explanation for why\u00a0Black women on average were having children at younger ages than White women, which she called the \u201cweathering hypothesis.\u201d It goes like this: Racial inequality takes a cumulative toll on Black women, increasing the chance they will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2083,349,55,2091,252,778,23693,23695,285,1760,1757],"class_list":["post-31097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-abortionreproduction","tag-ageaging","tag-gender","tag-gender-healthmedicine","tag-healthmedicine","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-age","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-race","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31097"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31102,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31097\/revisions\/31102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}