New Evidence of Skin Color Bias and Health Outcomes Using Sibling Difference Models: A Research NotePosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2019-10-26 03:32Z by Steven |
New Evidence of Skin Color Bias and Health Outcomes Using Sibling Difference Models: A Research Note
Demography
Volume 56, Issue 2 (April 2019)
pages 753-762
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-018-0756-6
Thomas Laidley, Postdoctoral Fellow
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado
Benjamin Domingue, Assistant Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of Sociology
Stanford University
Piyapat Sinsub
Princeton University
Kathleen Mullan Harris, James Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of North Carolina
Dalton Conley, Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology
Princeton University
In this research note, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to determine whether darker skin tone predicts hypertension among siblings using a family fixed-effects analytic strategy. We find that even after we account for common family background and home environment, body mass index, age, sex, and outdoor activity, darker skin color significantly predicts hypertension incidence among siblings. In a supplementary analysis using newly released genetic data from Add Health, we find no evidence that our results are biased by genetic pleiotropy, whereby differences in alleles among siblings relate to coloration and directly to cardiovascular health simultaneously. These results add to the extant evidence on color biases that are distinct from those based on race alone and that will likely only heighten in importance in an increasingly multiracial environment as categorization becomes more complex.