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Competitive Swimming and Racial Disparities in Drowning

  • Published:
The Review of Black Political Economy

Abstract

This paper provides evidence of an inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and drowning rates using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data on fatal drowning rates and membership rates from USA Swimming, the governing organization of competitive swimming in the United States. Tobit and Poisson regression models are estimated using panel data by state from 1999 to 2007 separately for males, females, African Americans and whites. The strong inverse relationship between competitive swimming rates and unintentional deaths through fatal drowning is most pronounced among African Americans males.

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Notes

  1. The authors of this paper adopt the convention of using the terms “African American” and “black” interchangeably.

  2. Time standards for 2009–2012 were set for the following age groups: Under-10; 11–12; 13–14; 15–16; and 17–18.

  3. In 2012, 62.94% of the competitive swimmers in Minnesota were females (USA Swimming 2012).

  4. Fatal unintentional drowning means accidental deaths due to drowning or submersion. Excluded are homicides, suicides, or drowning deaths arising from legal intervention or war.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ice/icd10_transcode.pdf

    The CDC definition of fatal unintentional drownings includes: drowning and submersion while in bath-tub; drowning and submersion following fall into bath-tub; drowning and submersion while in swimming-pool; drowning and submersion following fall into swimming-pool; drowning and submersion while in natural water, including lakes, the open sea, rivers and streams; drowning and submersion following fall into natural water; or specified drowning and submersion, including quenching tanks and reservoirs. The CDC definition excludes cataclysm, transport accidents, and water transport accidents and such watercraft accidents in the course of recreational activities as overturning or sinking of a boat or falling or jumping from a burning ship or crushed watercraft. Water-transport-related drowning or submersion without accident to watercraft. The definition excludes drowning and submersion as a result of an accident, such as falling from gangplank, falling overboard, or thrown overboard by motion of ship, or washed overboard. Included in the definition, however, is drowning or submersion of a swimmer or diver who voluntarily jumps from a boat not involved in an accident.

    https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal_help/data_sources.html

  5. Retrieved from the Data and Statistics (WISQARS) system: number of deaths, population and the crude death rates by race, gender, year and state.

  6. The Year-round Athlete Membership Report by year is available at www.usaswimming.org.

  7. Population data provided by the CDC is from the U.S. Census Bureau interim population projections.

  8. The mean summer temperatures (in Fahrenheit scale) were estimated by computing the average temperature for the months of June, July and August. Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us.

  9. The cooling degree index reflects the demand of energy to cool houses and business when the temperatures are higher than 65 F degrees. Source: https://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/CDODivisionalSelect.jsp#.

  10. http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/wetstates.html

  11. http://coastalmanagement.noaa.gov/mystate/welcome.html

  12. When disaggregating by race and gender, the proportion of observation with zero drowning is: 70.6% for black females, 42.5% for black males, 53.18% for white females, and 18.3% for white males.

  13. New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Mountain and Pacific.

  14. Alternative model specifications fit the curves to the nth order polynomial and include dummy variables for whether the year is a summer Olympic year; whether Blacks won gold medals (2000, 2008); whether Blacks were on US Olympic team (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012; whether the USA wins 100 free (72, 76, 84, 88, 2012); whether the summer Olympics were held in USA (84, 96); or whether the USA participated in Olympics (72, 76, 84, 88, 92, 96, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012). The results are comparable to those in Table 4.

  15. Slopes and elasticities are larger for white females than for black females, but these differences are based on insignificant coefficients on lifeguards in the quadratic model for drowning among black females.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice, University of Minnesota, 263 Humphrey Center, 301 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Samuel L. Myers Jr

  2. Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 316A Ruttan Hall, 1994 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Ana Cuesta

  3. Minnesota Population Center and Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, 212 Ruttan Hall, 1994 Buford Avenue, St. Paul, MN, 55108, USA

    Yufeng Lai

Authors
  1. Samuel L. Myers Jr
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  2. Ana Cuesta
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  3. Yufeng Lai
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Correspondence to Samuel L. Myers Jr.

Appendix. Tobit Model – Full Results

Appendix. Tobit Model – Full Results

Table 5 Fixed effects
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Table 6 Tobit model without fixed effects
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Table 7 Robustness – full Poisson model
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Myers, S.L., Cuesta, A. & Lai, Y. Competitive Swimming and Racial Disparities in Drowning. Rev Black Polit Econ 44, 77–97 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-017-9248-y

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