When policies stigmatize: Bans of Sharia law and newborn sex ratio for Muslim mothers

• In Event: 3-004 - Studying the Prenatal and Neonatal Environments and their Effects on Development Using Secondary data

Abstract

Policies and laws are a crucial component of the social environment in which children live, and as such, researchers and policy-makers alike are often interested in how policy changes may influence children’s healthy development. Policy-focused research often assumes that changes in individuals’ behavior or material resources form the bridge between enacted policies and children’s outcomes. However, these are not the only pathways through which policies and laws could affect children – policies can also convey messages that become a part of children’s social environment and may, in turn, influence their development. For example, state legalization of same-sex marriage was associated with reduced rates of attempted suicide among sexual minority high schoolers (Raifman et al, 2017). Unfortunately, research examining this messaging pathway remains limited overall, and in the existing literature, identification of any messaging effect has been confounded by behavioral or resource consequences (e.g., the opportunity to marry).

The present study avoids this confound by examining a stigmatizing policy that had negligible material consequences: state-level bans of Sharia law, which were passed by ten states between 2010 and 2015. Specifically, newborn sex ratio for targeted mothers exposed to these policies is investigated, as maternal stress has been linked to biological “culling” of higher-risk male fetuses (Bruckner & Nobles, 2013).

Data come from the National Vital Statistics System natality records for 2007 to 2015, which contain birth certificate information for every birth occurring in the USA in those years (N=35,165,770). Mothers were assigned a probability of being Muslim based on the Muslim population in their country of birth (Pew Research Center, 2011), and mothers exposed to stigmatizing policies were identified as those who were pregnant at the time their state enacted a ban of Sharia law. Difference-in-differences regression analyses were used to exploit variation across states and over time in the passage of such policies and estimate their effect on newborn sex as mothers’ probability of being Muslim varied.

As seen in Table 1, newborn sex was significantly associated with the interaction term of ban exposure and probability of being Muslim, indicating exposure was associated with lower odds of a male birth as mothers’ likelihood of being Muslim increased. Further, the odds of low birth weight and preterm birth were similarly reduced, consistent with the “culling” of higher-risk male fetuses to stressed mothers. Overall, findings suggest that policies may indeed have important messaging effects, with consequences appearing as early as the prenatal environment.

Author

• Joshua Rivenbark, Duke University
  Presenting Author