Category: Education
Did China’s one-child policy have benefits?
As a leader I would never institute a one-child policy, which I consider to be an immoral restriction on personal liberty. But if we ask whether this policy had benefits for China, it absolutely did.
For instance the policy made China a more educated society more rapidly. It is simple economics that putting a lot of money into the education of each child is easier to do with a single child than with three or for that matter seven kids. The effects of the one-child policy are illustrated through a natural experiment of sorts. Chinese children who ended up born into twin pairs showed significantly slower rates of schooling progress, worse grades, lower chances of college enrollment, and worse health. These differences do not follow mainly from the lower birth weight of twins or other birth-related problems (though that is one factor), but rather they stem from the lower resources which are invested in children in larger families.
See Rosenzweig and Zhang, Review of Economic Studies 2009.
By the way, the one-child policy was not the main reason why Chinese fertility fell. Between 1970 and 1979, before the policy was put in place, the total fertility rate fell dramatically from 5.9 to 2.9. After the policy was introduced, the total fertility rate actually fell more gradually than during that earlier stretch, settling into 1.7 by 1995. The best estimate we have is that the one-child policy lowered Chinese births by an average of 0.33 per woman, which is a noticeable but not drastic change.
Even in purely practical terms, it is highly likely the policy has been obsolete for some while.
See Therese Hesketh, Li Lu, and Zhu Wei Xing. “The Effect of China’s One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years.” New England Journal of Medicine, September 15, 2005, 1171-1176, and Marjorie McElroy and Dennis Tao Yang. “Carrots and Sticks: Fertility Effects of China’s Population Policies.” American Economic Review, May 2000, 389-392.
Apple Should Buy a University
Apple has more than $205 billion in cash. What should they do with the money? Apple should buy a university and rebuild it from the ground up.
In recent years, some private equity firms have bought universities and turned them into for-profits. The for-profit model, however, has yet to produce a world-class university. But consider Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, it was only established in 1984 and yet today with its online students it’s the largest private, non-profit university in the United States. Liberty University doesn’t get accolades but it is a technology leader and it shows what is possible starting from a small budget.
Apple is a for-profit corporation not a charity but there are plenty of ways to make money from a non-profit university. Aside from the tax breaks and other deductions, Apple University would be a proving ground for educational technologies that would be sold to every other university in the world. New textbooks built for the iPad and its successors would greatly increase the demand for iPads. Apple-designed courses built using online technologies, a.i. tutors, and virtual reality experimental worlds could become the leading form of education worldwide. Big data analytics from Apple University textbooks and courses would lead to new and better ways of teaching. As a new university, Apple could experiment with new ways of organizing degrees and departments and certifying knowledge. Campuses in Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Berlin, and Sao Paulo could provide opportunities for studying abroad. Apple’s reputation would attract top students, especially, for example, if it started with a design and business school. Top students would lead Apple University to be highly ranked. The more prestigious Apple University became the greater would be the demand for Apple University educational products.
Apple already has the beginning of this model with iTunes U and its own internal Apple University for training in business and design. By buying a university, Apple would commit to a learning process to develop these technologies in entirely new ways.
More than a century ago Stanford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller used their industrial-age fortunes to build some of our best universities. Isn’t it time for another great university built for the information age?
What personality makes a programmer?
…the personality trait most strongly correlated with programming ability was not introversion or conscientiousness, but openness: a trait that’s related to being creative and imaginative. What’s more, over time to the present day, openness has become a more important correlate of programming ability, while conscientiousness has become less important. This is speculation, but perhaps more creative people are today drawn to careers in programming because of all the opportunities for imaginative expression in a world of apps, video games, snazzy websites, and social networks. Finally, the traits of agreeableness (essentially how friendly someone is) and neuroticism (how anxious and emotionally unstable) were not correlated with programming ability, pretty much refuting the tired stereotype of the socially awkward programming geek.
A final thought: knowing someone’s personality and mental ability doesn’t actually tell you a great deal about their likely computer programming skills. Personality traits and IQ in fact only accounted for around 12 per cent of the difference between people in their programming abilities, which just goes to show that the very idea that there is such a thing as a computer wiz “personality type” is nonsense anyway.
There is more here, original research here. I would put more weight on the second excerpted paragraph than the first.
China fact of the day
The number of people sitting the 2015 qualification exam for broadcasters and TV hosts more than doubled from the previous year as China has tightened the ban on hosts without a certificate.
A total of 13,311 people sat the test on Sunday, compared with 5,908 in 2014. Some well-known hosts also took Sunday’s test, according to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
The soaring number of examinees was believed to be resulted from a circular the administration issued in June. The circular banned guest hosts in any TV shows, including news, commentary and interview panels, reiterating that all TV hosts must have vocational qualifications.
The article is here, via Adam Minter.
New results on preschool from a Tennessee RCT
This is the most extensive and careful study of preschool (pdf) I have seen to date, conducted by Lipsey, Farran, and Hofer of Vanderbilt. The core result is this:
The third question we addressed involved the sustainability of effects on achievement and behavior beyond kindergarten entry. Children in both groups were followed and reassessed in the spring every year with over 90% of the initial sample located tested on each wave. By the end of kindergarten, the control children had caught up to the TN‐VPK [preschool] children and there were no longer significant differences between them on any achievement measures. The same result was obtained at the end of first grade using both composite achievement measures.
In second grade, however, the groups began to diverge with the TN‐VPK children scoring lower than the control children on most of the measures. The differences were significant on both achievement composite measures and on the math subtests.
In other words, after some period of time the children who had preschool actually did worse. I found this interesting too:
First grade teachers rated the TN‐VPK children as less well prepared for school, having poorer work skills in the classrooms, and feeling more negative about school. It is notable that these ratings preceded the downward achievement trend we found for VPK children in second and third grade.
So does preschool make kids more grumpy? Immigrant children by the way did well:
…whether or not ESL children experienced TN‐VPK, by the end of third grade, their achievement was greater than either of the native English speaking groups of children.
Arnold Kling offers comment, and for the pointer I thank Peter Metrinko.
Free college tuition for everyone?
A few of you have written in to ask what I think of the Clinton plan (NYT link) to dramatically reduce tuition for a four-year college education. The focal point of the plan is this:
Under the plan, which was outlined by Clinton advisers on Sunday, about $175 billion in grants would go to states that guarantee that students would not have to take out loans to cover tuition at four-year public colleges and universities. In return for the money, states would have to end budget cuts to increase spending over time on higher education, while also working to slow the growth of tuition, though the plan does not require states to cap it.
By the way, here is a more extreme Bernie Sanders plan, closer to free tuition period, though in both cases a variety of details remain murky.
One issue is to debate the social value and externalities associated with a college education, but that would lead us far afield. Let’s assume that such externalities are present.
A more pressing issue is that community college is already close to de facto free for lower-income individuals, if they piece grants and aid together. Yet the completion rate at these colleges is at best approaching thirty-eight percent. The real problems come before college, and encouraging more people to attend four-year colleges is unlikely to do much good. In any case, here is further evidence that higher subsidies to community college attendance very often do not lead to more actual education. The same or worse is likely to hold for state universities.
It could be the goal is not “college for more people” but simply to redistribute income to students who otherwise would have debt burdens. But they, with their above average human capital, are not the most deserving recipients of additional redistribution. Might a cynic wonder if this is simply a way to reward a constituency which often votes Democratic? Or a way to make the Republican Congress look like meanies?
The end result of the plan would be price controls on tuition, even though the plan itself does not stipulate that. There simply isn’t the political constituency to support an extra federal $350 billion for higher education (over ten years), plus the state kick-ins which are supposed to follow. The federal money will sooner or later dwindle, while the tuition restrictions will stick. In the longer run, this isn’t even a net subsidy to higher education. In the short run higher ed quality will go down, and in the longer run the move away from tuition support will imply more fiscal starvation for these institutions rather than less.
In sum, let’s not do this.
Addendum: Here is information on the Scottish experience with free tuition.
Division of labor markets in everything is science broken after all?
There is a growing industry where publication consultants will work with authors, research groups or even institutions to help get their work published, or help submit their dissertation/thesis. This help can range from proof reading, data collection, analysis (including statistics), helping with the literature review and identifying suitable journals/conferences.
That is from a new PubMed paper, via Neuroskeptic.
You know he’s great
Here are two sentences about Raj Chetty:
“The unintended consequence of Chetty’s work is a tremendous demoralization of teachers,” said New York University educational historian Diane Ravitch.
It’s funny how you don’t need to know more there. And this one:
He says he won’t register to vote because he thinks that could bias his “laboratory science” approach to economic research.
Both are from this WSJ Bob Davis profile of Chetty, or Google to the ungated link if you wish.
The culture that is Taiwan
They are starting to talk about pulling down Chiang Kai-Shek statues:
Fears over increased Chinese influence have grown since 2008 under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) KMT government, which has forged a rapprochement with Beijing.
Chiang’s authoritarianism has outweighed his Nationalist credentials and his image is wrapped up in that concern, with young people in particular feeling strongly that his memory should not be celebrated.
“Chiang was a dictator. For a long time, freedom of speech in Taiwan was suppressed,” said Peter Chu, 23, a graduate student at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. “Why should his statues be allowed to remain on any campus?”
“There have been calls for removing the statue [at my school], but the school authorities have done nothing about it,” said student and former Anti-Curriculum Changes Alliance convener Chu Chen (朱震), 18, who attends the prestigious Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. “Every year, graduates decorate the statue mocking it.”
The full article is here, and for the pointer I thank Mark Thorson. Here is Richard Bernstein about how Chiang’s reputation is falling in Taiwan and rising on the Mainland.
*The Invention of Science*
That is the new, magisterial and explicitly Whiggish book by David Wootton, with the subtitle A New History of Scientific Revolution.
I wish there were a single word for the designator “deep, clear, and quite well written, though it will not snag the attention of the casual reader of popular science books because it requires knowledge of the extant literature on the history of science.” Here is one excerpt, less specific than most of the book:
My argument so far is that the seventeenth-century mathematization of the world was long in preparation. Perspective painting, ballistics and fortification, cartography and navigation prepared the ground for Galileo, Descartes and Newton. The new metaphysics of the seventeenth century, which treated space as abstract and infinite, and location and movement as relative, was grounded in the new mathematical sciences of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and if we want to trace the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution we will need to go back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to double-entry bookkeeping, to Alberti and Regiomontanus. The Scientific Revolution was, first and foremost, a revolt by the mathematicians against the authority of the philosophers.
769 pp., recommended — for some of you.
I had to order my copy from UK, in the US it comes out in December and can be pre-ordered.
Leo Strauss’s greatness, according to Dan Klein
1. A sense of virtue/justice/right that is large and challenging.
2. An appreciation of wisdom as something different than progressive research programs/specialized academic fields and disciplines.
3. An understanding of the sociology of judgment, in particular the role of great humans.
4. An epic narrative, from Thucydides to today.
5. Rediscovery, analysis, elaboration, and instruction of esotericism.
6. Close readings and interpretations of great works.
7. Inspiring, cultivating serious students and followers.
I should add that Dan also is developing a counterpart list, of weaknesses in Strauss’s outlook and approach.
Economics and the Modern Economic Historian
That is a new NBER paper by Ran Abramitzky, the abstract is here:
I reflect on the role of modern economic history in economics. I document a substantial increase in the percentage of papers devoted to economic history in the top-5 economic journals over the last few decades. I discuss how the study of the past has contributed to economics by providing ground to test economic theory, improve economic policy, understand economic mechanisms, and answer big economic questions. Recent graduates in economic history appear to have roughly similar prospects to those of other economists in the economics job market. I speculate how the increase in availability of high quality micro level historical data, the decline in costs of digitizing data, and the use of computationally intensive methods to convert large-scale qualitative information into quantitative data might transform economic history in the future.
I have for a while been pleased that GMU has one of the largest collections of economic historians (I would say four,) of any department around, UC Davis being another major presence in that area.
What is stupid?
Should there not be more research on this apparently simple yet elusive question? Here is a new paper by Acezel, Palfi, and Kekecs:
This paper argues that studying why and when people call certain actions stupid should be the interest of psychological investigations not just because it is a frequent everyday behavior, but also because it is a robust behavioral reflection of the rationalistic expectations to which people adjust their own behavior and expect others to. The relationship of intelligence and intelligent behavior has been the topic of recent debates, yet understanding why we call certain actions stupid irrespective of their cognitive abilities requires the understanding of what people mean when they call an action stupid. To study these questions empirically, we analyzed real-life examples where people called an action stupid. A collection of such stories was categorized by raters along a list of psychological concepts to explore what the causes are that people attribute to the stupid actions observed. We found that people use the label stupid for three separate types of situation: (1) violations of maintaining a balance between confidence and abilities; (2) failures of attention; and (3) lack of control. The level of observed stupidity was always amplified by higher responsibility being attributed to the actor and by the severity of the consequences of the action. These results bring us closer to understanding people’s conception of unintelligent behavior while emphasizing the broader psychological perspectives of studying the attribute of stupid in everyday life.
What do you think people, a smart paper or a stupid paper?
For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
*Chicagonomics: The Evolution of Chicago Free Market Economics*
That is the new book from Lanny Ebenstein, I found it well-written and useful. You can read about Henry Simons, the Cowles Commission, Hayek, Jacob Marschak, of course Milton Friedman, and much mmore. Friedman, by the way, originally had intended to become an actuary.
Here is Friedman on Hayek from an Ebenstein interview from 1995:
Q: How would you describe Hayek personally?
A: In terms of his personal characteristics, Hayek was a very complicated personality. He was by no means a simple person. He was very outgoing in one sense but at the same time very private. He did not like criticism, but he never showed that he didn’t like criticism. His attitude under criticism, as I found, was to say: “Well, that’s a very interesting thing. At the moment, I am busy, but I’ll write to you about it more later.” And then he never would!
Friedman is extremely frank about Hayek in this interview, and repeatedly mentions that he objected to how Hayek treated his first wife. I have never seen Friedman be so negative, or for that matter so emotionally involved, and when it comes to The Fatal Conceit he simply avers: “It’s not up to Hayek at his best.”
You can then turn to two pages of Paul Samuelson, in a letter to Ebenstein, criticizing Milton Friedman. Ebenstein, by the way, argues that Friedman is essentially a left-wing, utilitarian thinker.
Why is Daniel Hamermesh leaving campus at UT Austin?
Economics professor emeritus Daniel Hamermesh will withdraw from his position next fall, citing concerns with campus carry legislation.
The law will allow the concealed carry of guns in campus buildings beginning Aug. 1, 2016. Hamermesh said he is not comfortable with the risk of having a student shoot at him in class. He teaches a course with 475 students enrolled, according to a letter Hamermesh wrote Sunday to UT President Gregory Fenves…
Hamermesh, who said he is under contract to teach his course in fall 2016 and fall 2017, said he will complete the semester at UT and will teach at the University of Sydney next fall.
Hamermesh said he thinks the legislation will impact the University’s ability to draw new faculty and staff to work at UT.
There is more at the link, via Catherine Rampell.