In the realm of health policy, the low birth weight of babies is used as a primary measure in infant health as well as welfare in economic research.
Low birthweight affects about one in every 13 babies born each year in the United States. It is a factor in 65 percent of infant deaths. [link]
[R]esearch has found that [low birth weight] infants tend to have lower educational attainment, poorer self-reported health status, and reduced employment and earnings as adults, relative to their normal weight counterparts…[B]irth weight has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of social policy. Research on the benefits of largescale social programs–including welfare and health insurance for the poor–typically use birth weight as the primary indicator of infant welfare. [link]
I would like to point out at this moment that I was a healthy 9 pound baby when I was born, well above low birth weight levels, thank you very much. Unfortunately when the time comes for me to have a baby, as a ‘U.S.-born Asian Indian woman’, I run a high risk of having a low birth weight infant, according to recent research coming out of Stanford.
U.S.-born Asian-Indian women are more likely than their Mexican-American peers to deliver low birth weight infants, despite having fewer risk factors, say researchers at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford’s School of Medicine. The finding confirms previous research that showed a similar pattern in more recent immigrants, and suggests that physicians should consider their patients’ ethnic backgrounds when planning their care…They found that Asian-Indian women were more than twice as likely to have low birth weight infants as were white women. These infants weigh 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds) or less at birth, either because they grew poorly in the womb or were born prematurely.[link]
These results are important in the realm of South Asian American health policy and are significant, at least should be significant, as to how prenatal care for desi women are implemented. As a desi woman, it is important to be informed of this issue and as a policy maker, it has inherent long term effect in our community.
“You might ask, ‘What’s so bad about being small?'” said Madan, who points out that the growth curves used for this and other similar studies are based on white infants. “Is this just normal for Asian Indians? But we’re concerned because we know that abnormally small babies run a higher risk of fetal distress and often require more intensive medical care and longer hospital stays after birth.”In addition, unusually small babies are known to be at higher risk for a variety of medical problems in adulthood, including diabetes, hypertension and an increased risk of heart disease – conditions that some studies have reported to be higher in Asian Indians. [link]
a guyanese (?? is this correct) nurse of indian origin told me that in the US it is a belief that women from the subcontinent tend to have small babies, which as a sonogram technician she said in her experience was not true.
this piece seems to back up what she said, though if they use the std. based on american babies ONLY, rather than cross-section of lets say WHO figures, then maybe our kids would seem small. later on, as the same stds are used, deshi children can seem underweight, falling in lower weight percentile.
our ped. said there is a WHO std coming out in late april based on a global cross-section rather then purely US cross-section, which might put a diff twist to this.
a guyanese (?? is this correct) nurse of indian origin told me that in the US it is a belief that women from the subcontinent tend to have small babies, which as a sonogram technician she said in her experience was not true.
South Asian women typically deliver healthy babies whose weight winds up in the 30-40th percentile on the American scale. Most OB/GYNs who treat enough South Asian women know this – its nothing new.
this stuff is going to be interesting. one thing about american-browns, we need to be more interested in our own genetics. i’m looking around seeing a lot of fatty-fats recently among brown kids, fatty-fatter than even whites (more like blacks and latinos). we can’t be eatin’ burgers & fries, especially the smaller set amongst (eg., bengalis like i). a friend of mine who was singaporean told me that browns tended to be the fat-asses there too. i don’t think we should go vegetarian like manish & co., meat tastes too good, but some aesetic moderation might do 🙂
as for low birth weight, i was 6 lbs 6 ounces. my sibs were all in that range. i would not be surprised if brown babies are smaller to begin with, though i haven’t looked into this research. i do know that some american doctors have “flagged” asian american kids who seem really small as pathological when the reality is that if a population is somewhat smaller you might end up with a LOT LOT more tiny ass kids (similarly, somewhat taller populations will have many, many, more people above a higher height threshold).
also, my understanding is that mexican-american health declines with assimilation. this ‘bad’ comparison might be a function of the fact that american-browns are assimilated & wealthy relative to mexican-americans.
Thought it was interesting that, if done like I learned, that I’m guessing they ran a multiple regression holding constant these variables – limiting the reason for causal effect I guess to ethnicity (correct me if I’m wrong, ennis or razib). They also used a data set of 6 million babies born in the US (which kinda seems large for a sample set, but it may be the way it is written).
I think it’s important to note that the study is being done on U.S. born South Asian women, who I personally would have expected to deviate from the birth weight of my mother’s generation…
I guess like most ‘Third world’ people, we have some sort of ‘accumulator’ gene which tends to gather fat in expectation of future starvation. I do agree, as brown people, we should take extra care of our weight.
that I’m guessing they ran a multiple regression holding constant these variables
the problem i would have with a multiple regression on south asians in terms of birth weight is that i suspect there is enough intergroup variation that this might mislead. there is a range of phenotypes among south asians where if you did a regression on punjabis and used it as a proxy for bengalis or malayalis you would get it wrong.* also, most of us here in the USA are sampled from the high SES and somewhat fatty-fat tail of brownland, if there is a threshold effect for deleterious impact of neonatal environment than he might see a big difference (though one assumes that the pathogenic load in the surrounding env. would be different, i don’t know how much of this would get into the womb).
I guess like most ‘Third world’ people, we have some sort of ‘accumulator’ gene which tends to gather fat in expectation of future starvation. I do agree, as brown people, we should take extra care of our weight.
europeans were dealing with starvation until 150 years ago (see irish potato famine). no, the key isn’t how much, but what. certain southern european groups seem to be able to intake a lot more refined carbohydrates than northern europeans, and they also metabolish alcohol more quickly so it doesn’t build up in the system than their northern brethren. this is the result of natural selection over thousands of years, agriculture didn’t come to sweden until ~5,000 years ago, vs. ~10,000 years in the middle east, and when it did come it was heavy on mixed-farming with animal husbandry.
anyway, i’m just saying that it can get irritating when palefaces project their physiological expectations on the rest of us. humans are fundamentally the same fundamentally different. science is fucked up like that 🙂
p.s. those interested in the intersection of genes, food and ethnicity might enjoy some like it hot, see my review here.
should this be different form non-US born deshis? just wondering if the fact women grew up here vs elsewhere would make a difference in whether their children were low or std birth weights.
Perhaps they mentioned US born desis because that population was available and easier to research than outside of the US desis. I’m sure location of birth doesn’t affect as much as genetics.
nonUS born deshis would mean expats who were born outside but live here now. these would be just as easy to access. i am askign becuase i know of several women,expats, that have given birth to what i would say middle of the percentile babies, so wondering whether its a genetic or environmental thing.
I was miniscule when I was born–2 lbs and 10 ounces I believe–but that’s because I was born three months early, and that in turn was because my mother slipped on the Colorado ice. There was nothing else wrong with me, and I went home pretty early, about a month later, weighing heavier than other month-olds who had been born at full-term. But I like to joke that I would have been a genius had I only made it to term.:-D
I totally recongize that I was freakishly lucky, and March of Dimes and the prevention of prematurity are good causes in general, not just for us.
Is this bc of genes? food? Personally I suspect that lack of exercise may play a role.
Interesting. One of the things about medicine is that ranges of ‘normal’ are developed on the types of patients studied. So, study a different group, set a different range. Incidentally, this makes it difficult to compare statistics of, say, infant mortality from country to country which is often used as a metric when discussing the merits of one type of health care versus another. The CDC website has an interesting set of links to studies talking about infant mortality and ethnicity, which is tough to parse. Is it related to some socio-economic circumstance or the genetics of the group.
Good post.
Unfortunately the study fails to answer the money question — whether low birth weight effects are comparatively pronounced in the South Asian population. In the next paper perhaps …
btw, if you canuk browns r so cool, where is sepia mutiny – frozen style? amerikan dynamism at work again i say.
In my experience, Indian babies (in India) – and this is mostly a Gujarati/Marwari Population – tend to weigh between 6-7 lbs, and be between 17-20 inches in height. the fatter ones seldom touch 9 lbs. Considering that In India the average height of the populations is 5’2″ and 5’7″ for women and men respectively, there must be something. What about prenatal diet? Women these days tend to be a lot more careful about calorie consumption whne they’re pregnant. I was told here in Bombay that pregnant women need to eat only 300 calories more than normal.
vis a vis the std, which is american caucasian babies is what i would assume, most of my european and other expats friends consider them overweight. i mean, in my neighbourhood of mostly european expats, u generally hardly ever see fat babies. where as other parts of the city seem to have the usual. i have often heard people say, wow, u dont wan tthem to look american. maybe peds can chime in, but our ped says that it has a lot to do with parenting styles. general american population use feeding as cry/fuss control mechanism, i.e. if they fuss or cry, feed em.
what does this have to do with anything, well if the std is overfed babies, then anyone else who isnt will seem lowe rin percentile. i dont recall seeing fat babies at home unless mothers are obsessives, which i have seen some.
its rather relevant then that US peds use WHO std based on worldwide populaiton to recommend actions to parents, not US std.
PS: childhood, and even infant, obesity seems to be a growing thing here, i am reading more and more on issue in general media, vs specific media.
There’s a lot of cultural bias in childraising advice, from birth weight to weight/height charts (my perfectly normal nephew falls at a low percentile on the U.S. charts) to vegetarianism (American docs told my father you couldn’t have a healthy kid unless you fed him beef) to circumcision.
This study seems to tell us Indian boys that we should from now on attempt to procreate with Latino girls. For the sake of our babies of course 😉
Who’s with me??
Way ahead of you, bro 😉
You have a secret love child with a latino woman? I thought you went to India to find yourself a bride? Dang, they tell us guest bloggers nathin in the bunker basement…
yup.. lots of misinformation – tell the american docs – you got an ironman here who trained on a diet of oatmeal/daliya, laal daal, chaawl and tofu, day in and day out – onward and forward.
“yup.. lots of misinformation – tell the american docs – you got an ironman here who trained on a diet of oatmeal/daliya, laal daal, chaawl and tofu, day in and day out – onward and forward.”
You vegetarian, dhavaak? I just tried to send you an email at your hotmail address – delivery failure. But probably good, because this new info helps in giving you recommendations.
two a’s before the v, ang!! dhaa-vak means runner in hindi.
The problem with these stats is that only white children were used as the barometer of what the “norm” is…anyhow, i remember hearing a discussion that asian-indians kids may be comparatively lower birth weight but that doesn’t mean much because perhaps it’s genetics, they come from stock that is shorter/thinner,etc.
I’m not sure about that- Studies show that despite what ethnicity the baby is, if it weighs under 2500 grams, it has a higher risk of dying. Even though it may be genetics that asian indians have smaller babies, they still have a higher risk of dying if the weight is less thank 2500 grams. Regardless of the ethnicities of other babies. Razib, MD, and ngm have brought up good points though.
Latinas, here I come. And with a study in my hand.
I was all of 9.5lbs at birth, and my nani took one look at me and assumed I was an Anglo-Indian baby!