New IPR Research: December 2024
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This month’s new research from our faculty experts explores what drives racial differences in C-section deliveries and what makes nutrition interventions successful. It also examines how outrage fuels the spread of online misinformation and the connection between officer-involved killings of unarmed Black people and racial disparities in sleep.
Health Inequalities
What Drives Racial Differences in C-Section Deliveries?
In the United States, Black women are significantly more likely to deliver their babies by Cesarean section (C-section) than White women. In a new working paper, IPR economist Molly Schnell and her colleagues investigate the drivers underlying the racial difference in C-section deliveries. The researchers examined data from nearly one million births in New Jersey from 2008 to 2017. The records included information about the self-identified race of the patients, how their baby was delivered, medical risk factors, and delivering hospital and physician. They compared C-section rates among patients with the same medical risk being treated by the same doctor in the same hospital and discovered that Black mothers with unscheduled deliveries were over 20% more likely to deliver by C-section than similar non-Hispanic White mothers. This suggests that the racial disparity in delivery method is not due to differences in underlying medical risk or practice styles of the providers that patients of different races see. Rather, additional findings show that doctors stop conducting additional unscheduled C-sections on Black mothers when operating rooms are more busy, suggesting these additional C-sections are driven by doctor discretion rather than differences in unobserved medical need. Results further show that discretionary C-section deliveries for low-risk mothers negatively impact maternal and infant health, so the researchers suggest that policies should aim to reduce medically unnecessary C-sections among low-risk Black women.
Measuring Participation to Understand Nutrition Intervention Success
In 2020, roughly 10% of the world was undernourished. In Current Developments in Nutrition, IPR anthropologist Sera Young and colleagues examine an education initiative with farmers in Tanzania aimed at improving food security, focusing on patterns in community participation levels. The researchers randomly assigned half of the villages in the study to be immediately exposed to a nutrition-sensitive agriculture intervention and then worked with village leaders to select households to survey. Over two and a half years, the researchers conducted seven rounds of surveys with 295 households and two sets of interviews with the “mentor farmers” selected by their village to deliver the intervention. They found that women, especially when they were empowered, participated in the initiative longer than men did. Older individuals and those with more education also participated longer. Overall participation was initially low, increased sharply after seven months, then plateaued after the first year—a pattern possibly explained by decreased attention from mentor farmers. Longer program participation was associated with greater knowledge of intervention topics—sustainable farming, gender equality, and child nutrition—and increased use of sustainable farming practices by all participants. Among women who participated longer, their husbands took on more household tasks, and their children’s dietary diversity increased. Future initiatives should focus on engaging the younger, less empowered, and poorer households that participated the least. This study underscores how understanding who participates and for how long can reveal critical insights into how interventions achieve—or fall short of—their intended impacts. Young is a Morton O. Schapiro IPR Faculty Fellow.
Policy Discourse and Decision Making
Outrage Fuels the Spread of Online Misinformation
In an era where misinformation threatens democracy, public health, and social cohesion, a new study by Kellogg social psychologist and IPR associate William Brady and colleagues investigates how moral outrage drives the spread of false information online. Analyzing data from Facebook (more than 1 million links), Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users), and two experiments involving 1,475 participants, the researchers found that misinformation evokes more outrage—a mix of anger and disgust—than trustworthy news, making it especially engaging and likely to be shared. Outrage fuels the spread of both misinformation and accurate news, but its connection to political conflict and group identity makes it particularly effective for spreading falsehoods. Users share outrage-inducing content impulsively, often without checking its accuracy; they appear to be driven by motives like signaling political loyalty or reinforcing group biases. The study builds on Brady's previous work showing that social media algorithms, designed to prioritize engaging content, fuel cycles of sharing and extend the reach of posts that evoke outrage. Current approaches to slowing the spread of misinformation, such as accuracy prompts, fall short because they don’t address the deeper reasons people share outrageous content, such as habit and the desire to connect with their social groups. By revealing the psychological and technological forces behind misinformation, the researchers offer key insights for creating strategies to curb its spread and promote healthier online conversations.
Neighborhood and Community Safety
Officer-Involved Killings of Unarmed Black People and Racial Disparities in Sleep
Research shows that Black Americans report that they sleep less than White Americans, putting them at risk for worse physical and mental health. In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, IPR sociologist Andrew Papachristos and his colleagues investigate whether exposure to police officer-involved killings of unarmed Black people is linked to sleep amount in Black communities. The researchers use data on sleep duration from two nationally representative surveys: the US Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) and the American Time Use Surveys (ATUS). They examined responses from almost two million adults as part of the BRFSS and 56,390 adults from the ATUS between 2013 and 2019. They also reviewed data from Mapping Police Violence, an online database tracking officer-involved killings since 2013. They then used data from both surveys to examine changes in sleep duration for Black adults before and after exposure to officer-involved killings of unarmed Black Americans locally and nationally. The findings reveal that Black Americans are more likely to report that they got short sleep (less than seven hours) or very short sleep (less than six hours) compared to White Americans after exposure to an officer-involved killing of an unarmed Black person. White Americans showed no changes in their sleep after these incidents. Black Americans reported even less sleep when the killing was in the state where they lived. These findings highlight the role police violence can play in shaping racial inequality in sleep.
Photo credit: iStock
Published: December 13, 2024.
