Clear Enough
Kevin Drum writes a bit about the considerable evidence that environmental factors play a large role in reducing the IQs of poor children and says "it's still unclear what to do about this. Intensive educational interventions are the most obvious possibility, but results on this front haven't been very promising."
I think it actually is rather clear what to do. Evidence suggests that across a broad range of criteria having poor parents is bad for children in ways that are very difficult to mitigate through child-targeted interventions. The best way to cope with this would be to take steps to enhance the material living standards of poor adults. That would be a nice favor to the adults and would significantly reduce the challenges facing their children. Unfortunately, while the electorate has a reasonable willingness to try and do things to help out poor kids (because it's "not their fault" that their parents are poor) there's a lot of reluctance to providing serious assistance to poor adults who are deemed to "deserve" their fate. This is a significant political challenge, but I think the policy issue is reasonably clear -- the best way to help poor children is to help poor people generally.
Well that raises the question: what is the best way of helping poor people generally? Many poor people especially in rich countries are prone to self-destructive behavior: drug addiction, teen pregnancy etc. Ignoring the judgemental aspect there is still the practical issue of how to help people trapped in such situations. There are probably some low-hanging fruit in terms of poor people who have good work habits but have suffered from bad luck but it's far from clear that the majority of the poor fall in this category: particularly when we are talking about the hard-core poor.
Personally I believe that even the "undeserving poor": ie those who have repeately made poor choices should be helped by government but I don't think you can use the same approach as with the "deserving poor". Something tougher might be needed though I am not sure what the precise policies should be.
July 25, 2006 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
What needs to be shown is why should the poor be helped as an end in itself, and not for any other practical benefit.
July 25, 2006 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matt,
I think your causation is too simple. I'm going to use a neologism, "ppoor" here to mean "lacking material goods", to explain why.
Many ppoor people are graduate students; I very much doubt that outcomes for their children are generally damaged by their ppoverty. Many ppoor people have other problems that hinder childraising. For example, someone who is barely literate is very unlikely to read to their children, and reading to children is important in intellectual development. Someone who is barely literate is also likely to be ppoor, but giving them more resources wouldn't help them read to their children.
In other words--it's significantly a skills issue; resources won't help much if the skills aren't there.
July 25, 2006 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Come on, Matt, you know causation isn't correlation. Is it really likely that (relatively) low standards of living hold back poor children rather than bad behaviors by their parents? Is another $500 a month more likely to be spent on educational stuff (or even "self esteem boosting" nice clothing) rather than more lottery tickets, beer, or cigarettes?
I honestly thought your lead in was going to present one of your patented counterintuitive/outrageous suggestions - that the "rather clear thing to do" is give the children to richer parents. Raising up the children to better parents is more likely to work than raising up failing parents.
July 25, 2006 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
surely there are other developed nations that have different levels of problems that we can use to compare and contrast.
In Sweden for example, what percentage of the people would you classify as "more likely to ...spen[d] on ... lottery tickets, beer, or cigarettes"? Is it the same as in the US?
What are the differences? Is it homogeneity?
I do not know the answer to these questions, but I am pretty sure that it isn't just throwing up our hands. Cycles have to be broken somehow.
July 25, 2006 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Being poor/rich is only a proxy measurement for 'having the ability to raise kids.' This catches things like having the education level, cultural interest, money and time off to get kids to do interesting stuff. Helping the poor would only help with one of these things (money) and not the other ones.
Being rich is not a sufficient conditions to have smarter kids, as George H.W. Bush has proven with his progeny. On the other hand, it is not necessary condition either, as say teachers' kids while not exactly rich, do usually outperform their peers on average.
Blanket help for the poor as a *solution* to raising poor kid's IQ would be a poor allocation of money. Allocation of money in schools in poor neighborhoods would most likely perform better.
July 25, 2006 1:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
percentage of Swedes likely to spend their money on booze is much higher than in the US, thus their heavy regulations to curb down alcoholism.
July 25, 2006 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem, of course, is that twins studies seem to indicate that giving the children to richer parents really doesn't do much for them, either. The harm from poor parents seems to result from having poor biological parents, whether the cause is genetic or prenatal enviroment.
By the time they're born, it's too late.
Now, a program of dietary suplimentation for poor women, (Not waiting until they're pregnant, because by the time they know it, it's too late for the supliments to help much.) based on the latest findings about the influence of maternal nutrition on fetal brain development, THAT would probably be quite helpful.
Assuming you could get them to take the supliments, of course.
July 25, 2006 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now that we've slashed the welfare roles, I don't think that there are that many underserving poor left. In any event, there are sure plenty of deserving poor people who could use more help -- higher wage subsidies (EITC), more generous medical programs, and so on.
Without disagreeing that we ought to provide more direct assistance to the poor, I think Matt is missing one of the most important problems facing poor children: crime.
It's common in high crime neighborhoods for poor children to be kept indoors almost all the time in order to protect them. Having no place to play harms the cognitive and emotional development of children, and is just terrible on a lot of levels.
So, yes, we need more aid to the poor. But we need more cops too.
July 25, 2006 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
"This is a significant political challenge, but I think the policy issue is reasonably clear -- the best way to help poor children is to help poor people generally."
I totally agree with this, and would add the best way to help ourselves is to help all the needy generally. This old concept practiced in the past was called “Public Interest”.
This fits in with an observation from the original article; "The findings are also consistent: how genes are expressed depends on the social context."
There has been great concern about alcohol, drugs (both prescription & recreational use of) and chemicals affecting us before birth and afterwards.
There have been studies that address individual indicators of longer life on individual bases (having friends), but not as a societal ecosystem.
The question becomes are all the elements, both physical and culturally, of the society today working together to insure that our genes produce a fully expressed human being!
We are fellow humans before we are rich, poor, healthy, sick, or a member of any one nation state.
If there is no concern for all humanity is there any real concern for any one individual. What does it take to matter? What is valuable? Money! Power! Genetic resistance to an epidemic?
We want to protect the forest and its inhabitants to look for the magic cure for individual diseases, yet not look within humanity for who carries the genes for our future much less ask does our environment support us continuing to be Human!
If we cannot see ourselves in others, can we really be aware. Are our genes that make us human not being expressed?
July 25, 2006 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sam Chevre writes
I think your causation is too simple. I'm going to use a neologism, "ppoor" here to mean "lacking material goods", to explain why.
Many ppoor people are graduate students; I very much doubt that outcomes for their children are generally damaged by their ppoverty. Many ppoor people have other problems that hinder childraising. For example, someone who is barely literate is very unlikely to read to their children, and reading to children is important in intellectual development. Someone who is barely literate is also likely to be ppoor, but giving them more resources wouldn't help them read to their children.
This is a silly argument you are making. Defining poverty solely by income misses something. Poverty is generally characterized by a lack of support networks, and a lack of skills and often eductation. A grad student who has temporarily chosen to make less money to acquire skills doesn't generally fit these criteria. I'm sure you are right that if all poor people suddenly had the medium income, their children would still lag behind. But its also kind of hard to argue that outcomes wouldn't improve. Given a couple generations, I would imagine the gap would be bridged.
Just to be clear I am talking about groups, not individuals. The whole personal responsibility line seems to get a boost from the occasional sucess story of the dedicatd bright kid and the parent who worked like hell to keep the kid out of trouble etc, etc. I'm sure these things can help a poor kid make it, but the point is that if you grow up either middle class or wealthy, your parents don't need to be nearly as dedicated and you don't need to be nearly as talented to suceed . There is a much greater margin of error.
July 25, 2006 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think the victorian (and renaissance) ideal of raising the cultural level for everybody (rather than pandering to the least common denomonator as is done today) should be entirely tossed out the window. What I mean is that cultural material (songs, stories, poetry, games) available to "richer" children is linguistically richer and more nuanced -- much of it is traditional folk music, poetry, hymns, fairytales and the like. Nowadays this material is stigmatized as "elitist" though much of it was collected from the lower classes (albeit it had to be acceptable to the middle class collectors). Still, it ought to be the patri/matri-mony of the culture as a whole. These things are not valuable for selling products or producing test scores but are treasures and resources to be stored up for life -- a consolation in adversity and old age, companion in travel, as the wise man (Cicero) said.
The movement toward simplification has gone too far -- Dr. Seuss books of 100 basic words or less, the practice of automatically removing all adjectives from news stories -- are some examples.
Music instruction can begin in the earliest years and is really part of language instruction. The settlement houses were resources for generations of immigrants, something like them could still be of use.
Of course no one can learn anything if constantly stressed by job instability, domestic abuse, chronic unattended health problems and so on.
July 26, 2006 8:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I completely agree that programs that start helping prospective parents before pregnancy would be useful (and have been proven to be useful), your claim that it is "too late" is misleading. Some damage has already been done, but the childhood environment does matter.
The French research discussed in the New York Times Magazine
article shows:
Rich kids adopted to poor families have lower IQs than they otherwise would be expected to have.
Poor kids adopted to rich families have higher IQs than they otherwise would be expected to have.
This evidence clearly contradicts your claim.
July 26, 2006 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not talking about IQ, I'm talking about financial success in life. Not quite the same thing, though they tend to be correlated.
Anyway, that rearing has some effect does not contradict the vast importance of prenatal enviroment. And prenatal enviroment is easier to objectively address; You can't get good rearing in a pill, you can choline.
July 26, 2006 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, financial success is easy to fix. You give everyone rich or powerful parents! It worked for President Bush, and it even worked in the especially challenging case of his brother Neil.
July 26, 2006 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for stating this so succinctly and clearly.
July 26, 2006 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting point, but I will note that if nothing else ppoor gradute student parents will generally have access to one of (a) a university-subsidized health care plan (or a low-cost university clinic) (b) a parents' health insurance plan (c) if all else fails, knowledge and skill in gaming the system to obtain at least basic health care for the kids.
This is something that other poor parents do not have, and the lack of even basic medical care alone is devestating.
sPh
July 27, 2006 5:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Student,
I think we're saying the same thing--sorry if it wasn't clear.
You say:
Poverty is generally characterized by a lack of support networks, and a lack of skills and often eductation.
I say:
Many ppoor people have other problems that hinder childraising, such as poor literacy.
My point is that helping with the material goods would help, but that the providing more material resources would still provide not education, skills, and support networks
July 27, 2006 6:05 AM | Reply | Permalink