The data hinted at racism among white doctors. Then scholars looked again
economist.com
economist.com
Key excerpts:
Black babies in America are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday than white babies. [..] even after controlling for socioeconomic differences a wide mortality gap persists. Yet in 2020 researchers discovered [..] “when Black newborns are cared for by Black physicians, the mortality penalty they suffer, as compared with White infants, is halved.”
Now a new study seems to have debunked the finding, to much less fanfare. A paper by George Borjas and Robert VerBruggen, published last month in PNAS, looked at the same data set from 1.8m births in Florida between 1992 and 2015 and concluded that it was not the doctor’s skin colour that best explained the mortality gap between races, but rather the baby’s birth weight. Although the authors of the original 2020 study had controlled for various factors, they had not included very low birth weight (ie, babies born weighing less than 1,500 grams, who account for about half of infant mortality). Once this was also taken into consideration, there was no measurable difference in outcomes.
The reason why white doctors at first looked like such a “lethal” combination with black babies, say the authors of the recent paper, was that a disproportionately high share of underweight black babies were treated by white doctors, while a disproportionately high share of healthy-weight black babies were treated by black doctors.
Findings like this become more suspect if one demands a more specific cause for the effect. It's rather hard to imagine racism explaining a difference in standard of care that would make a measurable difference to mortality, but not be so brazen as to get noticed by conscientious observers.
> and concluded that it was not the doctor’s skin colour that best explained the mortality gap between races, but rather the baby’s birth weight. Although the authors of the original 2020 study had controlled for various factors, they had not included very low birth weight (ie, babies born weighing less than 1,500 grams, who account for about half of infant mortality). Once this was also taken into consideration, there was no measurable difference in outcomes.... a disproportionately high share of underweight black babies were treated by white doctors
Ah, a hidden correlate. It makes sense that, since low birth weight is a complication, those babies would be disproportionately delivered at larger hospitals with a diverse team, rather than some small local hospital where the staff are more likely to resemble the local community.