Latina Birth Outcomes in California: Not so Paradoxical

OBJECTIVES: To investigate Latina-White differences in birth outcomes in California from 2003 to 2010, looking for evidence of the often-cited “Latina paradox” and assessing the possible role of socioeconomic factors in observed differences. METHODS: Using statewide-representative data from the California Maternal and Infant Health Assessment, an annual population-based postpartum survey, we compared rates of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW) in five groups: U.S.-born non-Latina Whites (“Whites”), U.S.-born Mexican–Americans, U.S.-born non-Mexican Latinas, Mexican immigrants, and non-Mexican Latina immigrants. Logistic regression models examined the relative likelihood of PTB and LBW for women in each Latina subgroup compared with Whites, before and after adjustment for socioeconomic and other covariates. RESULTS: In unadjusted analyses, women in each Latina subgroup appeared more likely than White women to have PTB and LBW, although the increased likelihood of LBW among Mexican immigrants was statistically non-significant. After adjustment for less favorable socioeconomic characteristics among Latinas compared with Whites, observed differences in the estimated likelihoods of PTB or LBW for Latina subgroups relative to Whites were attenuated and (with the exception of PTB among U.S.-born Mexican Americans) no longer statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: We found no evidence of a “Latina paradox” in birth outcomes, which some have cited as evidence that social disadvantage is not always health-damaging. As observed in several previous studies, our findings were non-paradoxical: consistent with their socioeconomic disadvantage, Latinas had worse birth outcomes than non-Latina White women. Policy-makers should not rely on a “Latina paradox” to ensure good birth outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged Latina women

Geo-Metrics and Geo-Politics : Controversies in Estimating European Shale Gas Resources

This chapter explores the relationship between geoscientific knowledge production and geopolitical agencies in the making of new subsurface resources, specifically unconventional fossil fuels. Focusing on recent controversies surrounding the assessment of potential shale gas resources in Europe, we analyse the ways in which highly speculative and contested resource estimates have come to inform the geopolitical imagination of many EU states and, in turn, provided a new impetus for geoscientific inventories and exploration of shale formations. In the first part of the chapter, we engage with recent volumetric accounts in political geography and cognate disciplines to conceptualize these epistemic struggles of resource-making as a case of “subterranean geo-politics”. The empirical analysis in the second part then traces the geo-politics of shale gas prospecting in Poland and the UK, describing how volumetric projections of resource abundance have become undermined by diverse materialities and socio-political constructions of the subsurface. This is evidenced by the difficulties of translating knowledge across geo-economically disparate sites of resource development, notably the failure to apply the US-based expertise to the European context. Finally, we document more recent efforts by the European Commission and other epistemic authorities to overcome the deficiency and incompatibility of local resource estimates by developing standard, EU-specific geo-metrics for shale energy assessment. Fractures in the EU energy future: at the crossroad between security, transition and governance (Formas 2015-00455

The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability

The natural science in GEO-6 makes clear that a range and variety of unwelcome outcomes for humanity, with potentially very significant impacts for human health, become increasingly likely if societies maintain their current development paths. This paper assesses what is known about the likely economic implications of either current trends or the transformation to a low-carbon and resource-efficient economy in the years to 2050 for which GEO-6 calls. A key conclusion is that no conventional cost–benefit analysis for either scenario is possible. This is because the final cost of meeting various decarbonisation and resource-management pathways depends on decisions made today in changing behaviour and generating innovation. The inadequacies of conventional modelling approaches generally lead to understating the risks from unmitigated climate change and overstating the costs of a low-carbon transition, by missing out the cumulative gains from path-dependent innovation. This leads to a flawed conclusion as to how to respond to the climate emergency, namely that significant reductions in emissions are prohibitively expensive and, therefore, to be avoided until new, cost-effective technologies are developed. We argue that this is inconsistent with the evidence and counterproductive in serving to delay decarbonisation efforts, thereby increasing its costs. Understanding the processes which drive innovation, change social norms and avoid locking in to carbon- and resource-intensive technologies, infrastructure and behaviours, will help decision makers as they ponder how to respond to the increasingly stark warnings of natural scientists about the deteriorating condition of the natural environment