That is my latest Upshot column for the NYT, here is an excerpt:
Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter.
For instance, the achievement gap between children from rich and poor families is higher today than it was 25 years ago, according to a recent study from the Pew Research Center. Furthermore, higher income and educational inequality increase the incentive to seek out a good marriage match, so the process may become self-reinforcing.
…The numbers show that assortative mating really matters. One study indicated that if the marriage patterns of 1960 were imported into 2005, the Gini coefficient for the American economy — the standard measure of income inequality — would fall to 0.34 from 0.43, a considerable drop, given that the scale runs from zero to one…
A study of Denmark by Gustaf Bruze…showed that about half of the expected financial gain of attending college derived not from better job prospects but from the chance to meet and marry a higher-earning spouse.
…a recent paper by Robert D. Mare, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, showed that assortative mating was relatively more common in America’s Gilded Age, fell and reached a much lower level in the 1950s, and afterward started and continued to rise.
The G.I. Bill may have helped lower assortative mating, because it gave opportunities for upward mobility to economic classes that had not enjoyed it. In general, the greater the number of men entering the middle class, the more socioeconomic mixing will occur.
In 1950 it was also the case that marriage ages were especially young, meaning that couples often paired off from high school and may have had less of a sense how to match to each other by expected income or education. And most women had fewer chances to earn very much, so few if any men were searching hard to find future law partners or doctors.
I would put it this way. I frequently read the Sunday marriage pages of The New York Times, and I never feel that I am tearing myself away from social science research.
Do read the whole thing.
Perhaps we should consider legalising Polygamy as a way of spreading the genes of successful men.
Polygamy is in practice practiced by practicing “Christians” from western countries living here in the Philippines. They have multiple “girlfriends” and they tell each that they must travel for “work”. One guy down the street was from Europe and had two families before he was discovered. Very common. I myself am frequently accused of having a family back in the USA. Divorce is illegal here so you must resort to this if you wish to be a serial philanderer. In fact, there’s a certain “Philander Rodman” (sic, his real name) here who is the father of NBA Hall of Famer Dennis that has something like 50 plus kids in Subic. His name will live forever, like Ghegis Khan’s will…
@myself – bear in mind that in south Philippines it’s legal to have I think three wives if you’re a Muslim man. One old 60 year old guy, a famous singer who likes teen girls, actually converted to Mohammedanism just so he could marry his fifteen year old bride (one of two I think he had).
Even better polygamy should be permitted only for those with a net wealth above a certain level or a proven high IQ. We can go a step further and steralise those with low wealth and low IQs. Finally we need to subsidise the breeding of high IQ people so they should get huge tax breaks for every child they have.
Lee Kwan Yew’s wet dream
The world rose up to militarily destroy the last people with ideas like that, who actually tried to put them into action.
Let’s not let history repeat itself.
I cannot guess to whom you’re referring
Well even if they were in a minority, owing to their superior genes and talents the elite would win such a conflict and could devise a social structure to ensure stability. In fact prior to the enlightenment this describes human civilization quite well.
I imagine that’s what the Nazis thought.
I don’t see how just a devalued view of the intrinsic value of human life could lead to anything but war.
Moreover, you might actually be selecting for docility and obedience (try hard on that test now! … work harder!), not a recipe for a nice world to be living in.
What do you foresee as the upside? More trinkets? Reach the stars? What’s the endgame? Why the obsession with IQ as a means of determining the value of a life?
Great post Nathan, but I think you’ve finally shown that you have been an *excellent* troll all of this time:You’ve outdone yourself Nathan
“What is the benefit of greater IQ”?
Not even the most honestly liberal poster would ask such a question.
You had a great run, you got a lot of people to respond to you as you posed as the ultra liberal on the board, but sadly the gig is up.
Nathan W December 27, 2015 at 9:19 am
I imagine that’s what the Nazis thought.
It is also what a lot of Social Democrats thought. Sweden, for instance, was sterilizing the “unfit”, that is the lazy and Gypsies, into the mid-1970s.
I don’t see how just a devalued view of the intrinsic value of human life could lead to anything but war.
Switzerland did it until the 70s too. I don’t recall a lot of wars that involved either Sweden or Switzerland in recent times. Perhaps you could expand on that a little?
Moreover, you might actually be selecting for docility and obedience (try hard on that test now! … work harder!), not a recipe for a nice world to be living in.
Arguably that is precisely what Sweden did. And it is a very nice place to live. Everyone thinks so. What objections do you have to the Swedish program?
So that is the end game – the Nordic model of Social Democracy. You know, what people like you say they want.
@So Much for Subtlety: “Sweden, for instance, was sterilizing the “unfit”, that is the lazy and Gypsies, into the mid-1970s. […] Switzerland did it until the 70s too.”
Was this done on a mass, nationwide scale as a matter of public policy, as you imply, or in isolated instances for idiosyncratic, case-specific reasons?
If the former, citations please. Otherwise, I call bullshit.
You know, when checking Wikipedia would produce the results you want, it is not exactly difficult to find evidence of Sweden’s program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sweden
But I was wrong about one thing – it looks like they were doing them until 2011. Not until the mid-1970s.
Eugenics was an inherent part of Social Democratic thinking down to the Nazis and much longer in some places. H. G. Wells famously called for the yellow, brown and black races to be exterminated. Humanely I believe. How else do you deal with the free rider problem? The feckless will reproduce if you give them cash for doing so and in a few generations, your nice Social Democracy is over run with them. You have to do something.
Let’s be Nazis. It will be good for freedom.
Look, if I can’t call him an idiot for suggesting that Swedes were Nazis in 2012, shut the comments down.
They eventually banned it and paid out damages, because it’s wrong.
Oh, so they paid damages like a true Nazi would.
Keep in mind though, that the reason the world rose up against them was not due to their eugenic policies. It was due to their foreign aggression and invasions.
True. But it’s one of the reasons we call him evil, and not just some other warring imperialist.
Hitler modeled his eugenic policies after the Progressive attempts here in the US. FDR didn’t go to war with Hitler over eugenics.
He’s like a doll with a pull string on the back.
Just want to say my above comments were meant as sarcasm. I honestly thought this would be obvious.
Seem, sarcasm is a form of humor. True progressives have no humor in their souls (or whatever the secular replacement for souls are).
Advocating for eugenics is not funny.
Nathan W December 27, 2015 at 8:32 pm
Advocating for eugenics is not funny.
So we should stop testing for genetic diseases in utero? Force women to carry them to term? These people should be banned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dor_Yeshorim
Eugenics was an important part of the Left’s agenda up to World War Two. It even informed the Beveridge Report which was mildly eugenic. So that would be people on your side of politics. You say you live in China. China has a eugenics law and requires intending couples to get tested.
Giving individuals the choice is far different from state-sponsored programs to force “choices” (which are not choices) on people.
My personal opinion is that mothers should be allowed to screen for diseases known to have genetic causes, but that the state should never have a hand in trying to influence these choices, except by ensuring access to neutral information on diseases where genetic predisposition to diseases is know with extremely high certainty.
Here’s how I put it: “Let women be the Nazis”.
Simpler and less disruptive alternative: Modern birth control is nearly infallible. Virtually all women in American who get pregnant are at the very least seriously considering becoming mothers. Given that there are so many single moms, many fertilized by men they know will have nothing to do with the kid, they’re simply trying to become mothers. In lower socioeconomic stratas having a kid is viewed by many women as a right of passage into adulthood, the same way college is viewed by the upper-classes. This is a well-documented phenomenon, and the fact that welfare benefits are tied to single motherhood certainly helps this along. When having a baby gives you the money to move out of your parents’ house, of course its a marker of adulthood.
So offer an alternative. Identify a stable of male sperm donors who’s personal characteristics are highly indicative of economic success. High IQ, high C/E personality, high grit, etc. One sperm donor can inseminate tens of thousands of women. Provide two levels of welfare benefits. Low levels for women impregnated the traditional way, and much more generous levels for women participating in the sperm donor program. The NPV in future tax earnings from the high IQ offspring would more than pay for even high levels of welfare benefits. I don’t think hardly anyone would object to a million mini-Terrance Taos running around.
unintentional incest by half siblings in the furture?
It takes about 50 generations of survivable incest to split a species.
Not a bad policy prescription.
Conservatives work very hard to deny birth control to women, being most successful denying it most effectively to lower class women. Then, conservatives deny welfare to single AND married people without kids, so only those with kids can qualify for welfare as caretakers of poor chilldren. Men can’t produce children themselves, so it’s women who get the children. But a married couple with kids is also denied welfare by conservatives because they consider the man to be responsible to all the costs of living of his family no matter what. Thus, his leaving his family is better for them while bad for him. No matter what, conservatives will make responsible for the costs, putting him in jail for failing to pay, making it even more difficult or impossible for him to support his children.
Whether intentional or not, conservative men created the very system you think was created by women.
A welfare system that did not do this would focus on general welfare, welfare for single and married people without kids to ensure they are successful, and then they can plan to have kids.
“Conservatives work very hard to deny birth control to women”
Except there’s a walmart, cvs, or walgreens on every other corner and you can get a generic for about $10.
Only with prescription.
Prescriptions that Planned Parenthood will provide on a means tested basis to everyone, but especially teens, along with sex ed covering all aspects of sex without judgement.
And what are conservatives trying to do? Close down all Planned Parenthood clinics to deny women access to family planning services.
The dodge of some conservatives in advocating OTC birth control is not broadly supported by conservatives, and I’m sure the drug store chains providing IUDs and dermal implants to provide 5 years of birth control cheaply will be opposed by conservatives, especially if that is automatically covered by health insurance.
Colorado had a private foundation funded research plan to provide cheap long term birth control which dramatically reduced unmarried birth rates in Colorado. The evidence is clear that the savings in Medicaid for pregnant women, burths, and children is much higher than the cost of continuing and expanding that program to provide cheap or free long term birth control.
But is Colorado acting on the clear evidence of cost savings? No conservatives are opposed to promoting effective birth control.
VOX has an analysis of birth rate data: http://www.vox.com/2015/12/23/10652258/teen-birth-decline-map
Note how teen birth rate in the “teen birth rate chart” shows steady rapid decline while Clinton was president, stagnation while Bush was president, and a resumption of decline since Obama. For young teens, the birth rate is half what it was when he took office, just like Clinton policies cut it in half. The reduction for older teens is not as great, but Bush policies led to small increases in birth rate.
And the chart of birth rate by State over time shows the South, and notably Texas lagging behind in reducing birth rates. Of course, Texas is the poster child for the war on family planning services. Anyone want to argue Texas is not conservative?
Which of Bernie sanders policies is aimed at addressing assortive mating? I hear him bemoaning income inequality quite often but I’m not sure he is aware of any of its actual causes. His preferred explanation seems to be “them rich people took your money! Grab a torch and flame on!”
Free university. There are economic arguments for and against, but it would almost certainly mitigate the issue to some degree.
If you don’t mind community colleges, it is free for the poor.
\/| “bemoaning income inequality… but I’m not sure he is aware of any of its actual causes.”
yep, Tyler too seems to be embracing the bedrock leftist “inequality” theme lately. Bernie, Marx & Engels would would strongly agree.
“income inequality” is an inescapable and desirable result of the human Division of Labor. That Division of labor is the only thing that gets humans above a subsistence level of existence. Labor Division (specialization & voluntary cooperation) has achieved spectacular economic advances for the great masses of humans where it has been allowed to flourish. More humans with more stuff ain’t a bad thing; concentration and mobility of some wealth ultimately gets more stuff and better lives for all
Humans are born with unequal abilities and aptitudes. An ever-greater division of labor is needed to give full scope to the abilities and powers of each individual. That critical division depend upon the innate diversity (inequality) of humans. There would be no expanse at all for a division of labor if every person were uniform and interchangeable.
Bemoaning income inequality is ignorance and stems from Marxist ideology.
You forgot to add, some humans are born from rich parents and some dont….
How bad does inequality get before some people stop trying very hard, or worse, start collecting their pitchforks?
Also, there is cyclical poverty with very bad impacts on the economy due to poor human capital accumulation.
Some inequality is good. Too much can be bad. Without legitimizing ideas of central planning or micromanaging the economy, it is entirely legitimate to wonder how unequal things get before it becomes a net bad.
It won’t come to pitchforks. And I don’t think inequality is a major factor in demoralization. People stop trying very hard when they don’t enjoy the sweat of their brow and/or they can get along ok without trying very hard.
Any video game designer could tell you people stop trying very hard when they get so far behind they can never catch up, or when you don’t offer them any extra reward for extra effort.
“…can never catch up”? With whom? The 1%? I guess we should all just put down out tools then.
/kicks rock
“extra reward for extra effort”. Hmmm. Incentives matter? Duh.
Many peple that do well never tried very hard either: I for sure haven’t. But I was taught useful things when I was a kid, was blessed with a high IQ, so college was easy. There I married a smart woman with a doctorate. Now we both have 9-5 jobs, and yet we are the 1%.
Our kid will have the same base advantages: genetics plus an environment conducive to learning. His private school has him doing work that is easy two years ahead of where he should be by age. He will be able to screw his life up in college, like some of my classmates did, mostly by focusing on drugs and not even show up to take tests, but he starts with a major advantage.
It’s not as if effort can’t help overcome lack of privilege: A great colleague of mine was raised in a trailer park located in a rural midwestern town, and worked her ass off to get out of there, along with, again, high base intelligence. But a screw-up from my background ends up having a decent job, and the screw-ups in her family have far worse outcomes.
What explains the rise in inequality over the past 50 years? I never understood why libertarians who argue that inequality isn’t an issue ignore this point. Perhaps inequality is baked into our system, but if so why has it fluctuated so much throughout out history and is there any way of mitigating these fluctuations? I guess there answer is “we don’t know” and “it doesn’t matter anyway”, but their lack of curiosity on this point always astounds me.
Apparently, you’ve missed the entire libertarian discussion on the economic corruption of the Federal Reserve.
As opposed to the right, who embrace an innumerate “inequality” stripped of anything but the emotional message they desire.
(Inequality, when it is interesting, is about actual declining fortunes of Americans, by the numbers.)
Thank you. Inequality, when it is interesting, isn’t about inequality at all, is it?
Spare me your drawn-out sophistic rubbish.
Inequality is interesting when is comes from the data, shows that fortunes spread by the decline of some, and not just the faster advance of others.
Right now we know from the data, that lower income workers are falling behind AS the top end accelerates. (link from TvK)
Drawn out? I thought it pithy.
Your original comment spoke of “declining fortunes of Americans”. Yes, to the extent Americans are poor or Americans are becoming poor, this is an interesting and important question. Nothing to do with the 1%.
Unless you are suggesting that the 1% are in fact taking from those who are poor, that they are actively making people poor or driving people into poverty or keeping them there. Is that what you are saying? That’s a pretty bold claim. Show your work.
If this was not sophistic rubbish you would have already explained to all of us how the decline of the middle and the rise of the top are disconnected effects.
How did that work? As disconnected effects?
1. Decline of The Middle Class is mostly a leakage of middle class into upper middle class. It’s not really a thing.
2. The rise of the top is a thing. Above, I mentioned Frank’s “winner take all” hypothesis, which is at least 20 years old. Not news.
It is the undoubted fact of the rise of the 1% that makes it more important to look at “median” rather than average numbers for the rest of us. The median is doing fine. It’s not doing as well as the top 1%. But you of course draw a direct casual connection between the rise of the 1% and the (imaginary) decline of the middle class. Very sloppy, young man.
\/| “How did that work?”
How does your holy grail of income equality ‘work’ ??
(since income equality has never existed at any time in any society)
Economic production does not simply happen automatically and income is not distributed randomly in aggregate sub-groups; income is a direct function of individual production.
In the absence of coercion (hallmark of a free market economy) — income is either earned personally … or given to someone as charity/gift. Source of that charity/gift is always someone else’s personal productivity. An individual who directly earns income received it from someone else in exchange for a product/service, under the economic division of labor.
There is ultimately no free lunch in human survival/progress against mother nature.
And there’s no genuine free market in the U.S. — we’re enjoying the “benefits” of government soft-socialism for the past century, but leftists are still quite unhappy with the results.
Brian, when you say “mostly” you are telling us you are fine with leakage the other way. You just want to go obscure it. 7% of the middle went to high incomes per Pew, 4% went down.
RcM5, you have no idea my preference. More importantly, this observation is not about my preference. This is about the middle class, and how they like the changes.
Perhaps some of that 7% has sympathy for that 4%.
Note that when 4% of the whole move from the 50% segment, that is an 8% reduction of the segment.
8% of the middle class slipped down.
RcM5 – Income is a direct result of personal production IF IF IF we all have equal negotiating power.
But capital is encouraged to band together and negotiate collectively (via the board and management) while laws against union busting are rarely enforced.
If capital is encouraged to negotiate collectively, labour should be encouraged to do the same. Otherwise, income will be way out of whack with production.
So why is the Left hating on Donald Trump so much? It looks like he is doing a lot to redress inequality in American society. Clearly we need a policy to encourage rich men to divorce their first wives and marry beauty queens.
I would say it should be tax deductible, but I am having trouble wondering what might be deducted.
Well, that isn’t the complete picture of Trump’s first marriage, as you left out one word – ‘Clearly we need a policy to encourage rich men to divorce their immigrant first wives and marry beauty queens.’
A first wife who committed various acts that might cross the border into visa fraud, it must be noted – ‘In the early 1970s she earned a master’s degree in physical education from Charles University of Prague. In 1971, she married Alfred Winklmayr, an Austrian skier, in order to obtain a foreign passport so that Communist leaders would not deem her a defector. In 1974 she divorced Alfred Winklmayr. In 1975 she left Czechoslovakia for Canada to be with a childhood friend, George Syrovatka, who owned a ski boutique there. For the following two years she lived in Montreal and worked as a model for some of Canada’s top fur companies. She then left Syrovatka and moved to New York to promote the Montreal Olympics. It was in New York that she met Donald Trump, son of prominent real estate developer Fred Trump.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivana_Trump
prior_test December 27, 2015 at 3:31 am
A first wife who committed various acts that might cross the border into visa fraud
I am not sure what you’re saying but what I am hearing is that the Left has finally meet a refugee they did not like. Are you claiming that a perfectly legal marriage that may have the intent of immigration is more reprehensible than immigrating illegally? That you would be happier if she had crossed the border with no documents at all?
To me this looks like a win-win for the Left – allowing more non-WASP immigration *and* reducing inequality. What is not to love?
‘I am not sure what you’re saying but what I am hearing is that the Left has finally meet a refugee they did not like. ‘
What ‘Left?’ Ivana’s history is not exactly obscure, though the idea of Trump having married an immigrant is ironic, especially in light of the fact of how he nows rails against immigration. And Ivana was not a refugee when she left Canada to marry Trump, by the way.
Nor was she a refugee when she married an Austrian – though one could say that her reasons for that marriage were based on her desire to flee the country of her birth while still retaining her political viability, so to speak.
‘Are you claiming that a perfectly legal marriage that may have the intent of immigration is more reprehensible than immigrating illegally?’
You are aware that a marriage under false pretenses is not perfectly legal, right? And that a notable amount of illegal immigration falls exactly under that category? But one has to admit that Ivana probably fell on the legal side of being a gold digging immigrant, not someone breaking U.S. law.
‘That you would be happier if she had crossed the border with no documents at all?’
And to think that when she met Trump, there is an excellent chance she crossed the border without being checked for documents, back when the U.S. was utterly unconcerned about the threat of Canadians or those coming from Canada? I would be happier if those times would return, but clearly, that sort of freedom is merely receding in time. Much like I still remember being able to ride my motorcycle in front of the White House, before the blocking of a major DC thoroughfare ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Avenue#Enaction_of_security_measures ).
I am a (legal) immigrant that rails against illegal immigration. What is ironic in that?
It seems that the legal immigrants are most against illegal immigration, because it pisses them off that they have to wait in line sometimes for years while someone else sneaks in.
I am generally an immigration restrictionist, but will make an exception for young, hot Easter European models.
A first wife who committed various acts that might cross the border into visa fraud
Prior_approval extends his resentments back another dozen years. Next up, a sour complaint about that tramp May Britt bagging Sammy Davis, Jr.
Loved the economist example at the end.
Is there any way to estimate which design of power couples are assortative mating and which fraction is good old arranged marriage? The observable effect is the same, the difference is that assortative mating implies the choices on independent individuals while arranged marriage is influenced by elder relatives. Perhaps it’s worth looking at the age when people marry. I’d expect ting couples to be arranged marriages.
I don’t think there is any need to distinguish those two as they have similar effects on income and wealth inequality.
The historical point of the article is that there was less assortative mating in the mid twentieth century than at other times. One interpretation is that assortative mating is a robust feature, but the mechanism varies. Once arranged marriages went out of style, it took a few generations for new mechanisms to evolve.
A study of Denmark by Gustaf Bruze…showed that about half of the expected financial gain of attending college derived not from better job prospects but from the chance to meet and marry a higher-earning spouse.
So what proportion of the student body in Denmark is female? I think we can see at least part of the reason why the Arts and Humanities survive. And why not? With the decline of Churches, the refusal of parents to arrange matters, how else are girls going to meet eligible men?
It also suggests that Humanities subjects can continue to get worse and worse. At least some part of their customer base is not actually interested in learning about irregular French verbs or what happens in rat brains when you train them to run a maze.
The question is what is going to happen when colleges become virtually entirely female? Given the present trends, male student numbers can only decline. I would guess young women will still have to attend university because the competition for those few high earning males will be tougher. In turn they will have earn more because those men will start demanding those women make more of a financial contribution – essentially demanding an ever higher dowry.
Most of what you said is the product of imagination, and the last part takes a current trend and extends it to an absurd conclusion.
‘Most of what you said is the product of imagination….’
No need to be subtle, after all, when talking about what his writing is the product of.
The share of male cohorts who matriculate each year is the same as it was 35 years ago. What has happened is that the propensity of women to attend college has increased and the total increase in the propensity to attend college has been concentrated on the distaff side. Suggest the reason is that around the 65th percentile of the labor market, market signalling and vocational training for feminine jobs runs through baccalaureate granting institutions and that for men’s jobs does not.
The question is what will poor men do to meet women off of whom they wish to mooch. Not sure. Could be they chat at bars.
No that’s not the question. Men are a majority of the working population, and are a majority in every age group bar those under 20 (wherein girls have a slim advantage). If you add the census of women with pre-school children and the census of employed women, the sum is still exceeded by the census of employed men.
There is one segment of the population in which the population of employed women exceeds that of employed men: blacks, among whom there are 1.1 million more working women than working men. About 300,000+ of that gap can be accounted for by the the fact that the population of working-aged women is larger than the population of working-aged men and 300,000+ can be accounted for by the comparatively larger share of the male population which is incarcerated. The residual gap of 500,000 amounts to about 3% of the population of employed blacks.
That aside, the majority of those in managerial occupations are men (by a margin of ~ 2 to 1). The majority in most of the high professions is male. Men are a majority of those earning degrees in business, in information technology, in mathematics and statistics, and in architecture and engineering (and the margin in this latter set is 3.5 to 1).
Kay Hymowitz thought she could learn about the society she lived in by reading laddie magazines and listening to the younger women in her office kvetch; she was wrong.
There is one segment of the population in which the population of employed women exceeds that of employed men: blacks, among whom there are 1.1 million more working women than working men. About 300,000+ of that gap can be accounted for by the the fact that the population of working-aged women is larger than the population of working-aged men and 300,000+ can be accounted for by the comparatively larger share of the male population which is incarcerated. The residual gap of 500,000 amounts to about 3% of the population of employed blacks.
Wow. I knew there was a gap, but had no idea it was that large.
I think what’s being missed here is the role of increased low-income immigration. Weaker scores on standardized tests in low income ranges are mainly to do with poor English and migrant worker lifestyles that are very disruptive to education.
Bingo. Any serious discussion of income inequality that leaves out the role played by mass third world immigration into the West is a non-starter.
All those poor people who have immigrated from India and Nigeria?
Sounds very likely relevant for the broader picture of inequality, but less so to the massive income rises of the 1%, unless perhaps it is possible to figure out how many of the 1% are enjoying massive income gains by being able to exploit this source of lower paid low-skilled labour.
Any culture that disrespects learning is bad for the whole, and that is not limited to immigrants.
Fair to note that the GOP lineup rejects science and immigration. Interesting combination. Perhaps they hope for a glass half full world where natives are smart enough to do deals.
“GOP lineup rejects science”. At least the GOP doesn’t try to kill the messenger. Liberals deny science and evolution and then also destroy the messengers: “Fury at DNA pioneer’s theory: Africans are less intelligent than…” http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/10/james-watson-tells-inconvenient-truth_296.php
Given your genes all came from Africa, you are of Africanew genetic origin so you are arguing you are inferior to yourself.
Let’s give standardized tests to uneducated people who had poor nutrition as young children when their brains were developing.
Then, call ourselves genetically superior when they do poorly compared to highly educated people who had good nutrition as young children.
We can easily draw these conclusions because we’re soooo smart.
It’s the Democrats that reject science
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/03/the-republican-fluency-with-science/
http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/87474-yale-professors-surprising-discovery-tea-party-supporters-scientifically-literate/
Republicans know more about science, by a statistically significant margin. It’s the Democrats that are the party of vaccine denialism, fad diets, crystal healing, etc.
Sam, that first link shows remarkable agreement, until you get to the one flier in questions asked – Evolution. On the second, R=0.05 means the observed effect is minute. None of that supports “vaccine denialism, fad diets, crystal healing, etc.”
On the other hand we have the GOP binding to creationism and climate denial, and institutionalizing anti-intellectualism.
Any system where you can pick your truths to match your faith or ideology is anti-intellectual.
I think you’re conflating the party with the elites.
Republican elites may be more hostile to science than Democratic elites.
Republicans as a whole are more informed about science than Democratic elites.
http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/22/science-say-gop-voters-better-informed-open-minded/
“However, Pew’s data suggests that the Democrats’ low average rating likely is a consequence of its bipolar political coalition, which combines well-credentialed post-graduate progressives who score well in quizzes with a much larger number of poorly educated supporters, who score badly.”
From the Atlantic, evidence that it is liberals and not conservatives who believe in astrology, GMO opposition, etc.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isnt-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/
The difference is in the structure of the party.
The Republican Party believes that the wealthy should be free to keep their money, in return for the poor being allowed to believe as the wish.
The Democratic Party is based upon taxing the rich to bribe the poor to acquiesce to the social and cultural ideas of the rich.
No, that’s showing that Republicans are more scientifically educated. Democrats have a lot of really uneducated people and a bunch of highly educated people. Republicans have most of the middle.
The Democrats know less not because they reject it, but because they’re not as educated. The typical Republican is educated enough to know that evolution happens. A hell of a lot of them choose to reject it.
OTOH, anecdotally, my scientist sister flipped the hell out when I mentioned that the difference in male and female IQ standard deviations meant that there were substantially more very intelligent (and stupid) men
I’m not saying any culture rejects education. I’m saying much larger portions of the low income poulation today vs 1970 are not natively English speaking and/or have no long-term home. Ask any public school teacher with a trailer park community in their school, whether immigrant or not, black or white or other, kids with migrant or drifter parents are hardest to reach.
Young Earth Creationist will run Arizona Senate education panel
The Republicans are definitely the party of people who deny evolution and AGW, but that’s different from denying “science”
I would expect women entering the workforce to have escalated assortative mating. In the days of yore, I suspect that intelligence, education and earning capacity were considerably less important for men when choosing a wife compared to today. Also, fewer women went to college, so college-educated men were meeting their spouses somewhere other than college. Now days many college educated men meet their spouse at college, increasing the likelihood that they’re also (reasonably) high-performing.
I am not sure if this collleg mechanism works as some of you imagine. At least where i live, people marry a lot later than in college, so its possible/likely that they will have multiple relationships after college. However there is an important thing for women: They dont like dating guys with a level of education lower than them…. and this is a key fact here.
So according to Cowen, the Second Gilded Age is much like the First Gilded Age. It’s not entirely clear why Cowen repeats the theme. Maybe the point is that the Second Gilded Age, like the First Gilded Age, will eventually come to an end (history does seem to have a pattern). Maybe the point is that much of the rise in inequality is voluntary (matched, or assortative, mating being his prime example). As I’ve pointed out in a previous comment, matched marriage was definitely the pattern in my family during the First Gilded Age; in between Gilded Ages, not so much. Of course, during the Gilded Ages, economic forces encourage matched marriages, as those in the lower tiers are less likely to rise up to higher tiers and, therefore, marrying down came with risk; in between Gilded Ages, not so much. Today, marrying the child of a banker or the child or a barber is a fateful choice. As with the First Gilded Age, the path up is determined in large part by education, not just any education, but education at an elite college. While the identity of the elite college has changed somewhat (MIT (i.e., a real education) now being on par with Harvard), the common man (or woman) attending a middling college or university likely faces a lifetime of middling economic prospects. What’s different today is “diversity”, the dreaded policy of many elite colleges today, dreaded by whites from the lower tiers who resent being denied their rightful place in the elite college and a lifetime of economic and social advantages. My view, expressed often, is that this too shall pass, as economic forces (not social forces) will eventually bring the Second Gilded Age to an end; economic forces, also known as markets, have a way of bringing the economy back into balance. Nevertheless, if I were in the market for a spouse, I’d marry up if given the choice, because Piketty might be right and Cowen and I might be wrong.
Yeah, I’ll post it again. Stop posting these walls of text. You’re not that bad of a poster.
Why must the effects of assortive mating be countered? Mind your own business.
Assuming we all mate,
What this is really is a story about
IS
Opening up educational opportunities for women
And removing workplace impediments for women and sexism in the workplace.
Quite an assumption there; see above Doug’s comment about effectively gelding most men. Progress.
laderleff, Tyler’s unstated premise is that college educated men previously married uneducated women, or women who could not make it in the workforce. I assume that college educated men in both periods married college educated women. Assortivity occurred in both periods. What is different is that the value (human capital) of women increased in the second period, due to some careers (eg, doctors v. nurse) opening up, and increases of women in the white collar workforce.
If you start with an assumption that men suddenly began to marry uneducated females, I suppose the assortivity argument could prevail. But, if you look at the growth of female wages over time,you might also see a different picture.
I meant educated females.
So the thesis is that assortative mating explains inequality, but if policies like the GI Bill explained (negatively) assortative mating, then inequality explains assortative mating.
I do not consider this a problem but if you do there is he solution.
Male fidelity to physical attractiveness is the greatest levelling force we have as a society. And they call us “shallow”! I’m just redistributing the wealth, people!
Am I the only college graduate guy whose priorities in marriage was religion and then looks. Full disclosure my wife has an IQ of about 90. She thinks I am a genius hahaha. One of my sons is an engineer(IQ 135) and the other a plumber(iq about 95) and a great guy, ver handsome and doing very well thank you. My boys love to spend tie together. And my 57 year old wife still looks good! Still silm too
I think such a large IQ gap is not good for marriage. Still good that it worked out for you! I think if you were to get married in 2015, though, this would probably not work… Fun fact: Muslim people in non-muslim countries also go for religion first and then looks
Moreno Klaus: “I think such a large IQ gap is not good for marriage.” Can you get a little bit into why you think this? I’m curious.
Different habits and interests I suppose. Or, as Walter Lippmann put it, “Love and nothing else is very soon nothing else”. Knew an engineer once who married someone you’d describe as ‘very much his choice’ (both his parents being congenial but high-class mitteleuropeans. She got her GED while they were married. The marriage lasted three years. She had a nice figure. Very nice.
In prescribing non-assortive mating for others, maybe Dr. Cowen should practice what he preaches. According to Wikipedia, his wife is a lawyer, and while not an economist that hardly seems like a downward step.
I just looked it up — it is: 1) rock star 2) movie star 3) doctor … 57) dentist…78) economist…. 109) lawyer
You want him to put his wife out on the curb and marry one of the bookkeepers at Mason?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptm08Leirz4
Related from the vault: watch coven feign obtuseness.
Cause and effect, baby. Maybe when there are lots of middle class people, picking specifically for income does seem so imperative?
n’t
Does anyone read Thorstein Veblen these days?
Better information about the functions of mtDNA, transmitted in humans only through females, may change perceptions.
Has anyone determined that males are the carriers of the “intelligence” syndromes?
Does the best “intelligence” produce wealth?
The commencement of a decline in the ratio of M/F births (fewer males) might also be considered.
BUT, heavens, let’s not leave all this to spontaneity from individualities – let us have “Policies.”
Hey! where’re y’all goin’? OH1 and why?
If it helps, here is an overview of the data that applies to the U.S., spanning the years from 1947 through the present (well, through 2013 anyway, although if we were to consider the data for 2014, it wouldn’t meaningfully change any part of our analysis. The income data for 2015 won’t be collected until March 2016 and won’t be published until September 2016.)
Not everyone believes inequality is a problem. If you do, the problem is that too much wealth is pooling in too few hands. It’s irrelevant how it happened – low taxes, brilliant entrepreneurism, inheritance or something else. And that means any solution will be independent of the cause.
Put another way – solve the assortive mating issue and you still have an inequality problem.
This is framed as “assortative mating”; but, I suspect that largely misses the point. College students always have tended to match with other college students. But, in 1960, far fewer females obtained college degrees and entered and stayed in the workforce that do today and thus there was a lower chance to mate with someone of equal education. It’s not that people didn’t want to, but that there is better matching opportunities within the pool. *That* rather than “assortative mating”, as such, appears to be the main cause of “increased inequality” among households. It is not about “incentives” as Tyler puts it, but about availability and opportunity. Males were not looking hard for female doctors and lawyers in 1950 because there were hardly any to be found.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the study; however, I think it is impossible to import 1960’s mating to 2005 for the simple reason that there is a much higher percentage of females (and males, but particularly females) today with college degrees. It’s not that males no longer choose lower-educated females (or vice versa) to mate with. It is simply that there is a greater chance for a male to mate with a female with comparable education than it was in 1960. Take a look at this graph:
https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/fig6.jpg
So, I suppose the answer to the “inequality problem” is that females should not go to college and should stay in the kitchen (or go to college and return to the kitchen). Even the authors of that study admit that this is not entirely about “assortative mating”, but that point is largely glossed over:
“The upshot of the analysis is that rising assortative mating *together with increasing labour-force participation by married women* are important in order to account for the determinants of growth in household income inequality in the US.” (my emphasis added).
Males still aren’t looking for female doctors and lawyers. In any case, there are only a couple hundred thousand of each. While we’re at it, a third of the workforce in 1957 was female, at a time when most women were married by their 21st birthday.
I’m pretty sure Tyler was using “doctors and lawyers” in his comment as shorthand for all professions. Are you disputing that there is a much greater percentage of female professionals today than in 1960, so that the opportunities of males to marry them are also greater?
And, what is the percentage of females in the workforce today versus 1957?
“While we’re at it, a third of the workforce in 1957 was female, at a time when most women were married by their 21st birthday.”
And, your point is?
While we’re at it, I’ll throw this out there: I wonder what effect increased access to contraception and abortion, as well as better sex education, have had women in the workforce, “assortative mating” and therefore “inequality” since 1960?
Women are much more common in the high professions than was the case in 1955. An aspect of that is that the assumption that professional women are celibates has dissipated in the intervening years.
No, I don’t think men were or are particularly motivated by the professional status of the women they court (as opposed to professional women having certain qualities that a man from that segment is attracted to).
My point is pretty obvious: it was common for married women to be working in 1957.
Personally, I suspect this discussion is largely nonsense and that ‘assortive mating’ isn’t more or less common in any important way than was the case in 1914 or 1947. It’s just that the sorting tools vary from one era to another, something that’s lost in regarding college diplomas as the tool. My great-grandmother had a high school diploma, rather atypical for a woman from the 1878 cohort. Read Norman Maclean’s memoir of growing up in Montana ca. 1918. When he was a high school student, his mother was distressed that he did not know how to scan poetry and took to teaching him at her kitchen table. My great-grandmother was also a poetry reader, a rather unusual avocation in our own time for anyone who’s not an English teacher. Her husband preferred golf, hunting, and horses.
I guess I should have expected it because it’s the New York Times, but I was disappointed that Cowen wrote that we “rightfully reject the idea of eugenics as repugnant,” and that he suggested that “universal preschool, further experiments with charter schools, and higher subsidies or tax credits for children are among the policy innovations that might lift opportunities for children of lower earners.”
Preschool doesn’t work, and the tax credit will be a perverse incentive. He continues:
“Even if those are good ideas, it is not clear how much they can overturn the advantage that comes from being a child of highly educated, highly motivated parents with lots of will and also money to spend on lessons, outings, travel and other investments in the future of their children.”
Is 0<0?
Why do economists never focus on the damage increased income inequality does to gdp growth?
Does Tyler think an economy of
20% mostly dual income married people with family incomes of half a million with hundreds of thousands of dollars seeking to inflate asset prices because capital gains – asset price inflation – iso a public policy virtue
50% struggling to stay in the 50s-60s GI Bill jump start, union wage, and massive government defense spending driving Made in America advanced manufacturing middle class.
20% who fell out of the 50s-60s middle class because of the public policy of deflating prices of good and services.
10% poor with even fewer options to survive because they have been cut off from the economy, but unlike before the 60s, no longer live in tar paper shacks on land where they can hunt and trap, gather food, and work seasonally to get cash income. These people need welfare even more because they can’t get food and shelter from the land without committing crimes: the crime of being homeless
Most economists advocate making most Americans poorer bases on making workers poorer is needed to help the working poor. But by cutting wages of the lower skilled workers to cut the prices of food and goods that are essential to survive, the one who benefit the most are the top 70%, but they will not buy lots more of the lower prices goods to make the low wage workers better off, gdp growth will slow or stall leading to cost cutting further up the income ladder moving them out of the middle class into working poor. That too slows or stalls gdp growth.
When to top 20% go from spending 60% of their income on essentials to spending only 40% on goods and services and spend 50% inflating asset prices, gdp growth must decline.
And building more capital assets is bad for the top 20%. Let’s say they collectively invested in unicorporated unused farm land and built a planned community with Google buses for all residents connecting the community to the key office parks, shopping areas, and factories, making the housing high density with lots of duplexes and quads that are intended to be sold as units. If the housing is set to sell for $100K a unit in a market (offset by an assetment to pay for things like google bus service) where housing is $250K, the middle class workers will flood it and drive out the working poor.
Build enough of these projects, however, and other housing will fall in price.
And that would be bad for the top 20%. The falling asset prices means wealth destroyed.
But falling asset prices destroying wealth will reduce income inequality if it leads to building more productive assets. And if you can’t get wealthy by doing nothing but holding onto a stagnant quantity of assets, you will be forced to get wealthy by paying workers to build more productive assets for you so you have higher quantity of assets with the same value, but lower prices.
The value of housing is the shelter it provides and inflating the price of houses does not increase the value of houses.
And inflating asset prices depends on impoverishing workers by not paying them, but demanding higher rents fromm them for essential goods and services.
Here’s my new thought question:
Progressive taxation means that the rich pay a lot of taxes. A lot.
Assortative mating might actually bring in more revenue.
It’s also going to raise costs, as the poor will be with poor, creating more poor households.
Tail wagging the dog.
We don’t care about inequality for its own sake, we care about inequality because (presumably) we believe it means that the less fortunate are even less fortunate. Suggesting that decisions that are of first-order importance to human happiness, like choice of spouse, should be made on the basis of what is – at most – a bad proxy for suffering, is asinine.
Man, the way the comments get screwed up is a problem.
‘Thankfully the racial purity of German STEM education remains in this multicultural age’
Well, apart from the fact that something like 25% of the places in German universities are reserved for foreign students. Students who do not have to pay tuition, by the way – just like German students don’t need to pay. Oddly, the people in charge of German higher education seem to feel that having so many non-German students supported by German taxpayers is a competitive advantage in this multicultural age. Much like most Germans believe strict environmental regulations or politically powerful unions are also an advantage in competing in international markets.
Hey Gochujang,
Remember in the last inequality thread I brought up genetic inequality, and how if we had data…
It sounded crazy. And yet here we are with people concerned with engineering less assortative marriages.
Trying to reduce inequality beyond providing basic opportunity is game that may go down many bad rabbit holes.
So the middle class saw 8% of its members move down to lower class incomes. You are explicitly saying they are genetically inferior, so f’ em?
I am glad I am not on your side.
Impressive strawman.
Sorry, Harun confirms his position below.
Nope.
I’m saying that if you want to “correct” inequality for money, you may end up trying to arrange marriages, adjust for genes, etc. that can lead to all sorts of bad ideas.
Also, the middle class that is falling probably are just in jobs that can be done in Asia or by machines or computers. Its hard to retrain, and thus they fall a bit. Are they starving? No. They just can’t buy another jetski.
p.s. Its funny how you will go to bat for 8% of the middle class, but the 1%? the top 5% “eff ’em…take their money…they didn’t build that!”
My other point, was why keep obsessing over money?
Why not worry about genetics? For example, you’re smarter than me, so obviously that’s not fair, pay up in some fashion to “equalize.”
This assortative mating stuff is getting into that blurry line I was warning about.
Also, I believe it was someone else who said income is just a proxy for good lucks, being tall, being smart. Are you saying its not?
Corrigendum on the Greenwood et al article: http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/papers/ggksPandPcorrigendum.pdf
“The two numbers that need to be corrected in this table are: the counterfactuals for Random Matching for 2005 and
Standardized Table for 2005. When random matching is imposed in 2005, the Gini coefficient decreases from 0.430 to 0.420, which implies a small impact of sorting per se in the cross-sectional distribution of income. Standardizing the 2005 data amounts to forcing men and women to sort in marriage as they did in 1960. That is, change only the sorting patterns within marriage and nothing else. Doing so decreases the 2005 Gini from 0.430 to 0.429. This suggests that while sorting plays a noticeable role in the cross section it is not an important factor in explaining the hike in inequality. “
Tyler is deflecting. Inequality is rising because we are constantly injecting new money into the economy, and some get to it before others. Money is neutral in the long run, but not in the short run.
Okay, who on this board is volunteering to marry somebody more than 5 IQ points lower than themselves, or are willing to have their children do so?
Poor Tyler is having to do backflips to avoid any inference that genetics are a factor for intelligence and affluence.
Not everyone shares your obsessions.
Not everybody is an old bachelor living in upstate New York.
Neither am I, so what’s your point?
Art Deco sure gets hot and bothered whenever someone from iSteve shows up.
Okay, who on this board is volunteering to marry somebody more than 5 IQ points lower than themselves, or are willing to have their children do so?
If I was going to hold out for a woman with a 145 IQ I was attracted to, I’d be doomed to celibacy. I went about 10 points down to get married, for the record.
I don’t ask dates for their IQ results before deciding to get with them or not.
Is she curious? Does she have a heart (doesn’t hate people who are different, is kind, etc.)? And other various things about personality and character.
I mean, marrying down 50 IQ points would be pretty uninteresting, but unless the difference is ridiculously huge, other things are quite a lot more important.
I’m slower than most people at approaching women, but I have a pretty good idea about how smart a woman is before asking her out
OTOH, 5 IQ points is a ridiculously small amount to void a potential relationship over
I wonder if the supposed 1960 pattern of low assortative mating was real or was simply an illusion created by the difficulty in accurately measuring the social class of women in these times (after all, I think was not rare to find daughters of the upper class in jobs like secretary or nurse, together with low-middle class girls)
So, who are the nonpower couples?
The NYT marriage announcements are accessible online far into the past. They’d make an interesting database for social scientists or novelists.
It is amazing that we can have all this comment and discussion of assortative mating without mentioning the heritability of intelligence. The longer a true meritocracy dependent a major intelligence component combined with assortative mating based upon education, the economic, social and political power inequality will increase. Every generation is a turn of the genetic dial.
The heritability for intelligence is about 0.40 so just a few generations (about 60 years each) can make a big spread. We can’t depend upon the inbreeding of royal families, or the number of ways you can screw up the child rearing of a super bright kid to knock the top off this fat tail phenomena.
The social scientist need to get their head out of the PC sand and face reality. Genetic is relevant.
Super interesting article. The ye olde list of 13 economists to watch is fascinating…like a time capsule.
It *is* curious that six economists-to-watch are paired off…. However, perhaps more striking to me in these data is that only women who were married to up-and-coming economists were noted as up-and-coming economists. (There were no women in the list but the three halves of the married pairs.) There may be assortative matching going on but there’s also…something else… Perhaps social network formation in a setting where women were traditionally excluded from opportunities/attention/accolades?
(In this case, even if going back to the lower level of assortative matching evident in the 1960s would reduce income inequality, it might also be inefficient (a la income tax), and reduce aggregate income in the short term?)
“Today, we rightfully reject the idea of eugenics as repugnant, yet we are conducting our own experiments in mating, without much careful thought as to where they will lead.”
Huh? Why is the current system an “experiment” compared to how things were done in the 1950s or any other time in history?
The left? I thought republicans hate him as well …hence ted cruz.
Go into the STEM departments of any Western University and what do you see? Chinese kids.
You know, you do need to get a bit of perspective. Let me help by making this quote more specific – ‘Go into the STEM departments of any German university and what do you see? German kids.’
Obviously, Chinese parents have a higher opinion of western universities than they do of the German counterpart.
Thankfully the racial purity of German STEM education remains in this multicultural age
First, a picky point: Germany is also Western.
Second, Chinese students pick English language universities because they have exposure to English (300 million learners: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/09/english-china) and don’t pick German universities because they don’t speak German at all.
But what you said is probably also true.
And yet oddly, the Chinese have a distinct preference for the products created by the graduates of German universities. But then, Germany is still stuck in the old fashioned mind set that an industrial society is the best way to ensure a prosperous society. Germans are even quaint enough to think an export surplus is a sign of a healthy manufacturing economy.
Probably not true any more. There a lot of chinese/indian Phd students in Europe.
Mostly in English language programs.
‘Probably not true any more.’
Well, not in Maschinenbau or Biochemie at two different German universities, to name two areas where first hand experience is available.
Well, maybe – a number of German students go to Dutch universities at this point. In part, because English is not exactly common in a German university’s typical classes.
They’re still a less affluent country than the Netherlands, or Ireland, or Switzerland, or Norway, or the United States.