The Starting Gate

Birth Weight and Life Chances

Dalton Conley, Kate Wetteroth Strully, Neil G Bennett

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780520238664
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520937406
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Seven percent of newborns in the United States weigh in at less than five and one half pounds. These "low birth weight" babies face challenges that others will never know—challenges that begin with a greater risk of infant mortality and extend well into adulthood in the form of health and developmental problems. Because low birth weight is often accompanied by social risk factors such as minority racial status, low education, young maternal age, and low income, the question of causes and consequences—of precisely how biological and social factors figure into this equation—becomes especially tricky to sort out. This is the question that The Starting Gate takes up, bringing a novel perspective to the nature-nurture debate by using the starting point of birth as a lens to examine biological and social inheritance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Figures
• 1. The Baby or the Egg? Birth Weight and the Gene-Environment Divide
• 2. John Henry, Black Mayors, and Silver Spoons: Race and the Inheritance of Birth Weight
• 3. What Money Can and Can’t Buy: Income and Infant Health
• 4. Is Biology Destiny? Birth Weight, Infant Mortality, and Educational Achievement
• 5. Reconsidering Risk: Biosocial Policy Implications
• Appendix A: Data, Variables, and Methods
• Appendix B: Tables
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index