The Madison Miracle

As you probably know if you live in the midwest, Madison, Wisconsin is our most left leaning city. Detractors sometimes called it the "People's Republic of Madison," or "The left coast of the midwest" and it is the home of "The Progressive." I've only been there once or twice, and so I'm just passing along rumors about its reputation. Personal observation here. A recent issue of JAMA had an interesting CDC study on Dane County (Madison) on the the Infant Mortality Gap. JAMA itself is editorially a very liberal journal (with almost all the advertising from pharmaceutical companies), so it's important to remember that "gap" is the key word here--it's what liberals care most about--especially academicians and researchers paid by government grants. Never the individual, or even the group, but the GAP. It doesn't matter one bit if a second generation Hispanic family lives in a home with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 3 color TV sets, and a 2 car garage, because if a 5th generation white family has 6 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 4 HDTV sets, and a 3 car garage, you have a terrible gap problem that only demonstrates the evils of free market capitalism.

Well, somehow, the Infant Mortality Gap has disappeared in Dane County, and they can't figure out why--obviously, someone has miscalculated, because this just can't happen, not even in liberal Madison. I was a little puzzled too, reading through the stats

Of a population of 472,000 in 2007, only 4.8% is black

black women giving birth in Dane County have a median household income of $28,103 compared to white women giving birth with a household income of $50,927

77% of the black women giving birth are unmarried, compared to 19% of the white women (That ought to clear up the household income problem, right? Two incomes instead of one--duh!)

71% of the black women giving birth in Dane County have a high school diploma or less versus 21% of the white women (This is a very awkward way to say the white women are more likely to be college educated--the University of Wisconsin is located there.)

and

62% of the black mothers are on Medicaid, but only 13% of the white mothers in Dane County.

Despite poverty ($28,103 is called poverty in this study), out of wedlock births, and incomplete education, the gap has disappeared. So they're looking for all sorts of possibilities since 2002, the first year of the decline--increase in graduation rate, reduction in smoking, improved prenatal care, better record keeping, broader health insurance coverage, targeted public health programs, better neighborhood safety, advocacy for black women and their families and other variables. For now it will remain a mystery, because anything good that happened during the Bush Administration will have to be debunked, especially in Madison.