The Starting Gate Birth Weight and Life Chances [Paperback]

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 knowchallenges 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 consequencesof precisely how biological and social factors figure into this equationbecomes especially tricky to sort out. This is the question thatThe Starting Gatetakes 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.

Dalton Conleyis Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research and Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at NYU; he is also Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Adjunct Professor of Community Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.Kate W. Strullyis a doctoral candidate at New York University.Neil G. Bennettis Professor at the Baruch School of Public Affairs and in the Department of Sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In this engagingly written work on an important topic, the authors argue, quite convincingly, that the social and biological determinants and consequences of low birth weight have not been adequately explored by social scientists or natural/life scientists. Brian Powell, Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology, Indiana University

Conley and colleagues make a major contribution to knowledge of the causes and consequences of low birth weight and draw on that knowledge to formulate public policies for prevention and intervention. Tl*