The effects of living in a poor neighborhood

http://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11852640/cartoon-poor-neighborhoods

by micaeloliveira • 10 years ago

136 115 10 years ago

vox.com

dudul• 10 years ago

"Another popular left-wing idea is a universal basic income" UBI is not only supported by left-wingers.

antnisp• 10 years ago

I think it was a "eurolibertarian" response to the European welfare state.

dang5• 10 years ago

Indeed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11837459 begins with Milton Friedman.

cb182• 10 years ago

And I found Charles Murray's recent explication of the topic rather compelling.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-am...

hx872• 10 years ago

Being a take-my-money-and-leave-me-alone libertarian who values time and mental effort much more than money, I would love to replace the existing hodgepodge of a welfare system in the US with UBI + single payer health insurance.

benbenolson• 10 years ago

I'm the same as you, except that I'm still not convinced yet. The more that I see this idea being pushed, the more I'm convinced that people are going to want to add this to the list of the many government handouts, not replace them.

twblalock• 10 years ago

That's not what would happen. Such a simple, elegant system would never make it through congress. It's frankly naive to believe that UBI would be implemented the way libertarians envision it.

There are many reasons to believe that we would end up with UBI in addition to most of the programs we currently have. They are the same reasons we have the programs we have now, and those reasons will continue to operate in politics and society.

This is the best-written take on the subject I've seen so far: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...

I would be all for UBI if I thought it was possible to implement it in a simple and effective way, but that can't happen in a democracy, especially not ours.

brogrammer902• 10 years ago

As someone who actually owns rentals in poor black neighborhoods, UBI is the most retarded ivory tower idea I've seen gain traction. All the black families on my street have section 8 vouchers, so they basically have no debt service. What do they do with all this free time? Deal drugs, look for marks to mug, break into vacant apartments, wake up at 2 pm, etc. Drive through my street around noon and count the number of able bodied men doing absolutely nothing productive and you'll lose count. They're hopeless.

charlesdm• 10 years ago

What's the avg. yield on those properties? There obviously must be an incentive to invest there, if there's low income potential + lots of potential hassle with tenants etc

dragonwriter3• 10 years ago

Section 8 vouchers are a means-tested benefit program where the net benefit decreases with outside income, and, as such, create a disincentive (especially since people qualified for them also, nearly invariably, are on other means-tested benefit programs whose benefits also decline with additional income -- sometimes, in aggregate, leading to a greater than 1:1 decline in benefits compared to increased income) to productive activity.

This is precisely one of the problems with means-tested benefit programs, especially with an uncoordinated collection of such programs, that UBI, with its unconditional nature, is designed to solve. I don't see how that description of the effect of Section 8 vouchers (even if it is assumed to be both accurate, and generalizable) illustrates that UBI is a "retarded ivory tower idea".

sremani• 10 years ago

There is a wonderful article about effects of poverty in nautilus about Eastern Cherokee Indians post-casino prosperity and how their health and academic performance improved.I do not know of UBI will yield that, but effectively these native americans were getting checks for no work in exchange.

When there is no hope, there is no plan esp. long term plan, life becomes day to day exercise of attaining happiness now!!!

placeybordeaux2• 10 years ago

To make that argument you also need to make the argument that UBI is roughly equivalent to section 8 vouchers.

zanny2• 10 years ago

And they are hopeless because they are section 8 vouchers. There is rampant evidence welfare systems in place stratify society in the exact same way that literal walls built decades ago to segregate neighborhoods worked. If you are on welfare, you are operating in entirely different socioeconomic circles from people with access to capital and thus upward mobility.

If you grow up surrounded by people who subsist on poverty-wage welfare checks and you are literally isolated to that community because you parents are a part of it, how in the universe are you ever meant to obtain aspiration or escape it? There is no special snowflake effect here, people are the product of their circumstances (another important sociological observation the last two decades of post-cold-war-propaganda has presented ample evidence towards) and if you have a society built on a foundation of traditional racism and segregate people on that basis you should not be surprised when the members of that group lack strong work ethic or an attitude of improvement. They are put in a cultural cell with iron bars on the windows and while you can with effort escape it you are in a prison with all your friends, family, and everyone you have ever met, so when even given the option to escape, you often do not. It is why prison recidivism is so high with long-term incarcerated, and why particularly ostracized minority groups show less economic mobility.

thescriptkiddie• 10 years ago

Unconditional Basic Income is unconditional, not means-tested like Section 8. Section 8 creates a strong disincentive to work (legally) because you will lose your benefits if you make too much. Section 8 is not a program designed to help the poor, it is a program designed to subsidize landlords.

smilingtom• 10 years ago

This is basically exactly what I would expect someone who has gotten rich from exploiting poor people to say. We need fewer people like you in the world.

dang5• 10 years ago

This looks like a pretty substantive article with an unfortunately infantilized presentation. Let's try to stick to the important content if we can.

adamsea• 10 years ago

Asa non-infant, I actually appreciated the graphics.

capote• 10 years ago

I liked the presentation the most out of every aspect of the article. I don't think it's infantile.

If anything, I see the author's tone, bias, and perspective as problematic, but I suppose this is also just as subjective, and isn't a reason to not share an article.

ovt• 10 years ago

I didn't get very far in the article. Having so many cartoons is like having a commercial break every 20 seconds.

cjarrett• 10 years ago

I wouldn't mind if the cartoons were on the side. The chunking in this presentation is absolutely horrible. No ability to continue reading

minimaxir• 10 years ago

Compared to the quirky and random XD reaction GIFs and image macros that populate modern thought pieces for no constructive purpose whatsoever, the images in the article are fine and provide a relevant visual aid.

fchollet• 10 years ago

the quirky and random XD reaction GIFs and image macros that populate modern thought pieces

I'm just glad that we don't read the same "thought pieces"

PoorBloke123• 10 years ago

This article is the biggest bunch of rubbish that I have read in months. It takes bias to whole new levels. People are starting to realize that "studies" are almost always biased in the first place and should not be trusted. Secondly, look at some of the examples used:

A comparison is made between:

25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels* and moved up at least one.

and

59% of white kids moved up

Notice any difference here? The whole article is like this. Comparing completely separate things. This is laughable. I feel embarrassed by the bias and sorry for those who read this article with a straight face.

protomyth2• 10 years ago

This is the problem with quoting studies and not understanding what the stats actually mean with their relation to each other. It happens a lot with the studies themselves, also, but is pretty prevalent in pundit style presentations.

I'll give an interesting example from my twitter feed: "State records show that [Mr. X](1) claimed that his combined income in 1978 and 1979 was negative $3.8 million, allowing him to pay no taxes. A few years earlier, he had told the NYT he was worth more than $200 million."

This is combining two factual statements with the intent to link them when the linkage is actually not there. People pay taxes on income not net worth(2). You spotted a stat that is closer, but actually still not directly comparable without further information and fixing the wording to indicate the same action in the same way.

This doesn't even add the cases where studies have different basic facts about the observed and people trying to tie them together in problematic ways.

Their starting wall example is also pretty foolish given the actual destruction of vibrant black neighborhoods in urban renewal projects starting with 1949 and the Housing Act. Why build a wall when you can take the land?

1) yeah yeah, we all know who the quote is about, but I have no wish to argue with BOTH sides again. 1800 here we come.

2) well, ok, there are some specific stuff, but its not really relevant to the setup.

Also, yes, the graphics are horrible to the point of having a minecraft / 8-bit fetish is getting in the way of actually indicating what the information is.

srtjstjsj2• 10 years ago

Please with draw your incorrect aspersions.

Your example is not the same as the OP article, that faithfully reproduces the source data at: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpew...

srtjstjsj2• 10 years ago

Notice any difference here?

It's called an ellipsis. Here's the source:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpew...

"Figure 3 shows the prevalence of upward and downward economic mobility among blacks and whites, focusing on upward mobility from the bottom of the distribution (that is, among children raised in the lowest two quintiles of the income distribution) . . . Whereas 59 percent of whites raised in the lowest two quintiles are upwardly mobile from one generation to the next, only 25 percent of blacks experience upward mobility."

You are entitled to your opinions, but not your own facts. Please remove or edit your blatantly false statement.

dang5• 10 years ago

We've banned this account. Single-purpose accounts are not allowed on HN, especially when their single purpose is to post political rants.

If you want to participate on HN in good faith, respecting the rules about civil, substantive discourse, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

jamiequint• 10 years ago

Did he edit his comment? He's obviously failing at reading comprehension, but I don't see how his comment is a political rant in any way. He's (incorrectly) pointing out Vox's bias in the way they present data.

Personally, I also don't trust anything on Vox after they posted this debacle of statistics last year: http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-sta... which attempted to make a point on why gun control was so needed while completely failing to control for suicide (the most common cause of gun related death) and trying to make points about how gun control lowered suicide rates (by gun) while failing to note that a link between overall suicide rates and gun control has not yet been established by any study.

While this particular poster is simply wrong about the data presented here, I would hate to think that anything that doesn't conform to a left-wing viewpoint on HN would be considered "political" just for that reason.

zo1• 10 years ago

How do you know he doesn't intend on coming back tomorrow to post on another discussion?

praxulus• 10 years ago

Here's the original study: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpew...

Figure 3 shows that 25% of black kids who had parents in the bottom two quintiles moved up at least one quintile, while 59% of white kids who had parents in the bottom two quintiles moved up at least one quintile.

The comparison is perfectly valid. Vox is guilty of both incorrect and imprecise wording here, but not deception.

misterbowfinger• 10 years ago

In that study, does anyone know what the total population was and how they define "poverty"? The numbers reported from the article seem to directly contradict the Census, which reports that less than 30% of Black Americans are in poverty, and that over 50% of Americans in poverty are White.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

zuminator• 10 years ago

No contradiction. It's talking poor neighborhoods, not poor individuals. It's claiming that if you're black, there's about a 66% chance you grew up likely living in a neighborhood which is at least 20% poor. That doesn't contradict the Census data that 26% of blacks and 10% of whites are poor.

For example, using the Census figures, imagine the extreme case that blacks and whites lived completely segregated in their respective racial communities, and the poor within each race were totally uniformly distributed within their enclaves. Then in that case, 100% of blacks would live in neighborhoods that were greater than 20% poor - in fact exactly 26% poor. And 100% of whites would live in what would be deemed non-poor areas -- all white neighborhoods would be exactly 10% poor.

So what we're seeing in Sharkey is merely the secondary effect of a non-uniform distribution, not a change in the underlying poverty rates.

mc323• 10 years ago

I can dig it.

Living in a bad neighborhood exposes you to an in-ideal living atmosphere. The people you are around influence you in many ways and one of those ways is the wrong way --not because people in the neighborhood want bad things for their brethren --but because their way of life and expectations impinge on the growth of the new young people in the neighborhood with respect to the wider society.

Also, it's worth noting that widening inequality is a global phenomenon but not only between people but amongst nations. The inequality between let's say Mexico and Finland was different back in 1910 and what it is now. The inequality between poor and rich in the US was also less in the US back in the early 1900s.

Snargorf2• 10 years ago

Actually, wealth inequality in the West was higher before World War One. They called it the 'gilded age' for a reason.

It only got a lot more equal because WW1, the Depression, and WW2 combined destroyed most of the stuff the rich people had.

Only recently has wealth inequality re-approached pre-WW1 levels.

Source: Piketty.

mc323• 10 years ago

You're right. I had conflated GDP with disparity. GDP in the 1910s was more or less on par in Mexico, Finland, Portugal, Norway and Italy. That parity has dissolved and become disparity in the intervening years. On the other hand, in the age of the robber barons, you had the lower class and the wealthy, with little in between, so those not at the top were not as unequal as they are today. It's my impression it was more stratified (into two lobes). And given most people were rural and there were few in the professional class, I think it makes sense.

btilly• 10 years ago

It only got a lot more equal because WW1, the Depression, and WW2 combined destroyed most of the stuff the rich people had.

Don't forget 92% marginal tax rates on income over $1 million/year.

That was slashed to 72% under JFK. But regional inequality only took took off after it was slashed to 50% then to 28% by Reagan.

Today the rich have lower tax rates than average Americans.

aab0• 10 years ago

A highly one-sided presentation. Let me point out some issues: it makes major hay of Moving to Opportunity, but MTO is a notorious failure - it increased crime rates in targeted areas, and showed no improvements on anything until the cited Chetty paper managed to torture out of the data, just recently, improvements in only 1 subgroup on only a handful of metrics (which, aside from Vox misstating the Chetty results by implying it was all MTO participants, rather than one post hoc subgroup, contradicts the later experiment: the claimed effects do not remotely overlap); non-randomized moves are heavily confounded by upward mobility and human capital; many other studies like Swedish lottery studies and the land lottery natural experiment show that exogenous shocks of wealth do not produce meaningful improvements in things like health anywhere remotely close to the observed correlations of wealth/health; genetically informed family designs which account for heritability by looking at siblings differentially exposed or by looking at relatives tend to find that most 'poor neighborhood' effects are driven by genetic confounds; specific versions of the 'poor neighborhood' hypothesis tend to go down in flames when rigorously tested (most recently, the claim that schizophrenia is caused by bad neighborhoods, which everyone was sure about; polygenic scores for schizophrenia show that it is the other way around - schizophrenics and those vulnerable to schizophrenia drift to poor neighborhoods); in genetics studies, the correlation between wealthy parents and one's own SES turns out to be entirely genetically mediated; the parent/child IQ thing is differential regression to the mean; and so on. Many of the claims made in OP are naively causal and are guaranteed to be overestimated based simply on not including genetic relatedness. These are just the recent contrary studies I happen to remember offhand.

When you look at especially the recent genetic studies using polygenic scores from the GWASes to test environmental claims (eg Mendelian randomization), it's becoming increasingly clear: the slate is not blank and the sociology emperor has no clothes. I don't even know... what can be done about sociology? It is 2016 and every time I see a newspaper article or editorial invoking sociological results, it's totally wrong, and the sociologists quoted seem 100% committed to ignoring all the contrary evidence that not all differences are 100% due to environments. I mean... can you imagine seeing Vox cite a recent paper like "The Genetics of Success: How Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms Associated With Educational Attainment Relate to Life-Course Development" http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/05/26/095679761664... or a newspaper article on it (which didn't quote some scientists arguing that genetics research should be defunded or that the research is irrelevant)? That would be nice - society needs to come to grips with the confirmation of behavioral genetics. But it doesn't seem like it will happen anytime soon. It's all terribly frustrating.

Anyway, I didn't mean to rant or try to write an in depth carefully cited rebuttal, but I just wanted to say: it is not as simple as 'poor people are poor and unhealthy because of racism and poverty', and there is lots of high-quality evidence of this which tends to go undiscussed in liberal media outlets, so pieces like this are closer to advocacy than research popularization.

beatpanda• 10 years ago

society needs to come to grips with the confirmation of behavioral genetics.

In your opinion, what would that look like in the ideal case?

alanwatts• 10 years ago

"Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low.

Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. (Listen to him) That is what was known as the Populist Movement. (Speak, sir) The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses (Yes, sir) and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses (Yeah) into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South.

To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. (Right) I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, (Yes) thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. (Yes, sir) And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. (Yes, sir) He gave him Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, (Yes, sir) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. (Right sir) And he ate Jim Crow. (Uh huh) And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (Yes, sir) And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (Speak) their last outpost of psychological oblivion. (Yes, sir)."

Dr. King, Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, 25 March 1965

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentse...

randyrand• 10 years ago

This just in - being surrounded by good influences is good for you. And vis-versa.

This isn't rocket science, of course. We've know about the important of cultural influence for a long time. There was a reason my parents cared about where I grew up, and who I hung out with.

If you grow up in a culture where people don't care about academics, where welfare and child support are acceptable forms of provision, where machismo and crime are glorified, where you are told that discrimination will prevent you from otherwise succeeding, and that your failures can be blamed on racism - no, I don't think that culture will have a good influence on you.

placeybordeaux2• 10 years ago

while the surrounding culture does matter a lot, it's more than that.

There are also more mundane things such as poor access to quality food, education and secure places to relax. Malnurishment, poor education and constant stress all have negative effects on people.

ashwinaj3• 10 years ago

One of the comments I get people who visit India (I'm Indian) is that how is there a slum next to a swanky high rise or classy residential/commercial areas (at least in most big cities). I don't really have an explanation for this (lack of space, cheap labor etc.), but the more I read about economic segregation in the US the more I'm convinced that the inadvertent mixed income neighborhoods in India could be a solution.

If you don't live around people who are less fortunate than you, how can you understand their plight and their point of view? Handing out a few bucks to a homeless guy or cutting a check to a non-profit doesn't create any substantial understanding of the issue.

Obviously there will be opposition to this in the US since people want to live with other people in the same socio-economic strata as themselves. Other reasons: 1) I don't want my property price to depreciate 2) I don't want to live next to "da hood" etc. Until people have a drastic change in attitude this will be ongoing. The article touches on this a bit (section 8 vouchers) but why can't we have neighborhoods with multiple levels of housing options encouraging people with mixed incomes to be around each other.

Swizec2• 10 years ago

why can't we have neighborhoods with multiple levels of housing options encouraging people with mixed incomes to be around each other

Because americans have spent the last 60+ years working to "solve" that problem.

May I present to you, the White Flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

ashwinaj3• 10 years ago

Yes, I'm aware of white flight. It's 2016 and the claim is that America has supposedly moved on, but it surely doesn't look like it. Or no one wants to talk about it since it's embarrassing.

themartorana• 10 years ago

Huge disclaimer. This is how it was explained to me by my Indian host while I was working in India.

I remarked to someone basically the same thing - not only was it incredible that slums - corrugated-cardboard-house slums - sat right next to the 5 star hotel my company put me up in, but they were relatively safe.

One night we were walking through a slum because an Indian gentleman wanted to expound on my remark, and we came to a square that was decorated with lights and candles and flowers and all sorts of beautiful things. He said the people there had pooled their money, despite having so little. He then told me a lot had to do with the Hindu religion. Most Hindu's believed the position they were born into in life was the place in their spiritual journey they were meant to be, and doing well in that life was fundamental. It's a completely different way of looking at one's poverty.

He remarked that I wouldn't find the same type of sense of community in slums in Muslim parts of India, because their beliefs about their poverty and their lot in life was different.

I don't know if that's true, I didn't travel to any Muslim-dominated areas of India. It may have been true, it may have been his perception, but for that night, he was at least right about this local community, and it was a huge culture shock for a young man in his early 20s who had only seen slums in the US and, potentially more dangerous, Mexico City (and was warned to never, ever go there by my private corporate-sponsored driver).

ksou32• 10 years ago

He remarked that I wouldn't find the same type of sense of community in slums in Muslim parts of India, because their beliefs about their poverty and their lot in life was different.

Keep in mind he's probably biased in some way here.

facepalm3• 10 years ago

I find that Hindu bit fascinating because it is presumably what allows so many people to coexist on so little space. However, it is also a very convenient belief for the people who are better off. Kind of like the meritocracy on speed.

prawn• 10 years ago

There are housing developments around the world which intentionally plan for social integration. So, as you said, the fortunate better understand the less fortunate, and the battlers understand how others educate and motivate themselves, etc. If you're always around those doing it tough, I imagine it can be hard to break habits and improve your lot.

I've previously worked with one group called Common Ground:

"The tenancy mix reflects an urban living community where half of the residents are people who have experienced homelessness and the rest being low income earners. This creates the opportunity for friendship, integration and the breakdown of social barriers."

More: http://www.commongroundadelaide.org.au/what-we-do/creating-a...

They have some case studies as examples of what they can achieve:

http://www.commongroundadelaide.org.au/stories/karens-story/

bootload• 10 years ago

"If you don't live around people who are less fortunate than you, how can you understand their plight and their point of view?"

Great observation. I suspect the reason this viewpoint is less prevalent in the Western "OR" compared to the Eastern, "AND", styles of thinking.

jernfrost3• 10 years ago

I think this varies with western countries. As a Norwegian I could not fail to notice the extreme segregation of housing based on income and function in the US. You have very large areas in the US with housing which seems to fall within a very narrowly defined price range.

Now we don't have slums in the middle of wealthy areas in Norway (well we don't really have slums so that is another point), but middle class or working class and the rich can be living close to each other.

A strange thing about the US I find is that despite being so seemingly free wheeling capitalist where everything is supposed to go, it seems overly regulated and planned with respect to what sort of housing can go where. There are so many large homogenous clusters. You would expect a very free market to be far more chaotic in what gets built where.

I find this important as the argument in the US seems often be that people decide their own lot in life because in the US the market decides everything. Yet the outcomes seems far more political, and less meritocratic than one might assume.

shados• 10 years ago

Isn't that exactly how things are built in many of the larger US cities?

Luxury High rises are built in the middle of poor areas all the time. And all of the affordable housing city rules make it that something like 15-20% of new units in said high rise have to go to affordable housing, etc.

So you have a bunch of poor families who luck out and get to live in a million dollar 2 bedroom with free concierge service, which happen to be surrounded by homeless people.

ashwinaj3• 10 years ago

With the exception of NYC (maybe to an extent SF) I can't think of any other city where people exclusively live in high rises or buildings.

Most cities have a small cluster of high rises downtown (usually commercial and a small number of residential buildings) and most people live in suburbs with single family homes. Unless I'm hallucinating, that's how I've seen in most US cities I've been to.

mjevans3• 10 years ago

While the data might show these correlations I disagree on the premise that is reached as a result.

It is not just economic stratification, but cultural differences.

Those who have great wealth, and are not celebrity, tend to respect education, or at least attending 'upper tier academic institutions' for their upper society connections. Among this group of people knowledge /is/ power and it is respected.

In economically down-trodden situations it is as if the population has been conditioned that they are beyond redemption, that there is no hope in enlightenment bringing them a better future. Maybe they are correct in that respect as greed is a major driving factor in politics.

I suggest that the culture must change to enshrine knowledge and intellect as well as society rewarding normal productive labor for a real solution to these issues.

ASpring2• 10 years ago

I suggest that the culture must change to enshrine knowledge and intellect

How do you suggest to do this?

mjevans3• 10 years ago

I too am still only human; within my many flaws are gaps in my knowledge, experience, and ability that limit my capacity for solving this issue to a personal level.

That is, I try to set a good example and help those closest to me when I am able.

Maybe you or someone else has a solution that scales better?

cb182• 10 years ago

Doesn't all this seem somewhat backward.

There's this victimization mentality that acts like poverty is this absolute thing that is meted out like a cursed rock, outside the control and agency of whom it's been placed upon.

Why don't we have more discussion about the causes that lead to the effect of poverty.

It's really more productive to see poverty as being an effect, or outcome of other causes or actions. Change the input and get a different outcome. And at a certain point it becomes a personal responsibility. If you want to help someone else, great, but the two of you have to be pushing in the same direction.

And likewise, external conditions do have effects, if it comes to light that someone appears to be needlessly and negatively imposed upon there's clearly a place in society for discussing how best we can optimize everyone's external conditions. Everyone faces obstacles, but placing blame wholly outside oneself is always going to be a losing battle.

On top of it all, if a murder occurred in a child's neighborhood — in an area of about six to 10 square blocks — their score fell by 7 to 8 points.

This is so ridiculous that people can make a pronouncement like that, thinking it's a reasonable analysis, or indeed the only analysis.

We know that intelligence is a highly stable trait. Meaning for intelligence to be significantly diminished[0] requires something pretty drastic, like a serious brain injury or some kind of long term deprivation. There is no reason to think someone being killed within a particular distance of someone would have any kind of effect. Do all soldiers come home as dunces?

Something seems to be missing from the kind of people that write these articles. Hard to say what it is exactly, a more holistic view, better analytical capabilities, less pre-conceived notions, intelligence? something...

If they had whatever missing ingredient, then they might understand that an analysis that stands up to rigor is something more like,

People tend to self-segregate along a whole host of traits[1], intelligence is a trait. The trait of intelligence is linked to a propensity for certain types of crimes. Murder among them, therefore it follows that the people that commit murder are statistically likely to have lower intelligence, as are the people around them.

Oh, another thing: Living in these poor neighborhoods makes you significantly less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy

Oh, another thing: Any analytical mind of any worth can clearly see that the inverse has just as much going for it, if not more.

It seems to clearly follow that people who are less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy would make their neighborhoods poorer. How a focus on improving happiness, hope, and health? Telling people their predicaments are caused by factors outside of their control is the last way to improve any of those things.

[0]7 to 8 points is half a standard deviation, i.e. significant.

[1]See Schelling's Macro Micro, for some of the mechanisms involved.

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

I think you misunderstood ... it is not the murder per se. But that murders happen to concentrate in the worst of the worst parts of town. Which if there is correlation with kids outcomes as the article states - means that these kids live in the worst poverty of all.

pjc50• 10 years ago

Do all soldiers come home as dunces?

Many come home with post-traumatic stress disorder. Having people murdered in your neighbourhood can also result in PTSD.

less happy, less hopeful, and less healthy would make their neighborhoods poorer

Which way does the causation really run here?

lacker• 10 years ago

Hmm, wait a moment.

59% of white kids moved up.

43% of white kids moved down.

Even accounting for rounding, there's no way to get those numbers. It's even worse in other places:

25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one.

78% of black kids had parents who grew up in the top three levels and moved down at least one.

Those two groups should sum to less than 100%, certainly not 103%.

Also, except for the "Moving to Opportunity" experiment, most of this seems to ignore the distinction between correlation and causation.

This reminds me of the recent finding that 50% of papers in reputable psych journals reported mathematically impossible data. https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/the-grim-test-a-method-for... The more people start to dig in, the more the "social sciences" look unscientific.

Terribledactyl• 10 years ago

These numbers could be skewed from unequal number of children per parent in these different groups. Successful parents might have many more or fewer children.

archeopterix• 10 years ago

But children are integers.

squimmy• 10 years ago

It could be an issue of imprecise wording.

For instance, perhaps 59% of white parents had kids who moved up, while 43% of white parents had kids who moved down.

This doesn't excuse the reporting, but it might explain it.

ddlatham• 10 years ago

It seems very unlikely that "78% of black kids had parents who grew up in the top [60%] and moved down at least one."

Perhaps it should have been written:

25% of black kids [who] had parents [that] grew up in the bottom two levels [] moved up at least one [but] 59% of [such] white kids moved up.

78% of black kids [who] had parents [that] grew up in the top three levels [] moved down at least one [but] 43% of [such] white kids moved down.

But I agree it's unclear and this is just speculation.

cgriswald• 10 years ago

It really isn't clear to me whether it is the children moving up or down relative to their parents, or the parents moving up and down within their own lifetime.

Either way, children have two parents, so could be represented in both groups. Likewise, parents can have multiple children, and one sibling could move up while another moved down.

ASpring2• 10 years ago

It's poor reporting. The statements about white children should be qualified the same way the author attempted to qualify the statements about black children.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpew...

Timothee2• 10 years ago

That infographic and the text that goes with it could be made much clearer but your interpretation is not how it should be read. (as far as I can tell)

For one thing, as ASpring mentioned, the text about white kids were shortened, with the implication that the same sentence structure as for the black kids should be used. I'm assuming it was done to make the drawing easier to read (i.e. less text) but it certainly added confusion.

I.e. it reads "25% of black kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one" and it should read "59% of white kids had parents who grew up in the bottom two levels and moved up at least one" instead of just "59% of white kids moved up".

As for "Those two groups should sum to less than 100%, certainly not 103%.", this is incorrect: the 25% refers to the kids who had parents in the bottom two levels, while the 78% refers to kids who had parents in the top three levels. Those are separate groups. (same for the number with white kids)

So, if you look at kids coming from the 40% poorest (unclear if it's overall or amongst white/black people), from 1955 to 1970, only 25% of the black kids moved up while 59% of the white kids moved up.

And if you look at kids coming from the 60% wealthiest, 78% of black kids moved down while 43% of white kids moved down.

In other words, poor black kids are more likely to grow up and stay poor than poor white kids. Rich black kids are more likely to grow up and become poorer than their parents than rich white kids.

To simplify a bit (not 100% accurate with the available data but close): regardless of poverty level when growing up, only 22 to 25% of black kids moved up (or stayed the same), while 57 to 59% of white kids did.

Camillo• 10 years ago

His interpretation is how it should be read in English. It may be not how it should have been written.

78% of black kids had parents who grew up in the top three levels and moved down at least one.

Let B = all black kids; BT = black kids who had parents who grew up in the top three levels; BD = black kids who(se parents) moved down at least one level

The only way that sentence can be interpreted in English is:

|BT ∩ BD| / |B| = 78%

If what they wanted to say was:

|BT ∩ BD| / |BT| = 78%

Then the way to say that in English would have been:

Of the black kids whose parents grew up in the top three levels, 78% moved down at least one.

ausjke2• 10 years ago

Why blacks are not doing well?

Because they were from Africa, but new immigrants from Africa came to US earn a pretty decent life quickly than those have been here centuries ago.

Because they're minority, but other minorities such as the Jews and Asians are working hard and earning a decent life here.

Because of less chance to get education, but you have affirmative action that you can get into decent college at a huge discount as far as scores go. Also so many financial support for economically disadvantaged families.

Because of unfair tax system, election system... those seem not the key reason to me too.

I might be missing something else.

I think it's probably more of a culture thing, that favors education, hard working, loyal to family, etc. Without that, the civil rights law or various diversity initiatives can only help that much. The black community needs to address that gradually and it's the only way to fix the "poor neighborhood" for good.

In where I live, the elected democratic officers decided to bridge the poor community with "rich" community by building government-sponsored condos right next to or in the middle of up-middle-class communities,the result is that people move out and the house price drops, does not look like a right fix to me.

H0n3sty• 10 years ago

~11 million unauthorized immigrants as of 2014 (1)

Black labor participation rate at ~60% (2)

Black population in US at ~45M (3)

45M * (1 - 60%) = 18M

(1): http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-abou...

(2): http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/black-labor-force-pa...

(3): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...

randombacon2• 10 years ago

I think it's mostly cultural. I don't know of any other culture where the idea of shunning success is so widespread. People are made fun of for "acting white", studying, or shunned for "not being black".

mffhts• 10 years ago

Very true, same ideology was/is prevalent among the lower class in certain parts of England. (See Theodore Dalrymple)

Arainach• 10 years ago

Opportunity doesn't cure everything. If you take two people who both have the opportunity to earn the same income, that doesn't equate to the same standard of living. In particular, blacks (and other minorities) have dramatically lower levels of savings. This has real world consequences - if you have family members with savings, you have opportunities to take risks and fail. You have family members that can loan you money if times get rough rather than have to deal with payday loans, credit cards, or other high interest/high risk sources. You may feel more able to start your own business, knowing that if you fail there are family members who could take you in for a bit. The consequences run far deeper than just these examples.

mjevans3• 10 years ago

The ability to fail, safely. The ability to take positive risks can restore hope that those risks will pay off.

That might be an ingredient to successfully breaking the negative aspects the culture of poverty. Anyone who is big on BIG as a solution is probably seeing it from this angle.

facepalm3• 10 years ago

The original blacks who came to the US were not immigrants, they were slaves. For one thing there might be a bias in immigrants that doesn't apply to slaves, like having a certain education or wealth (immigrating tends to cost money). And immigrants are free to buy books, slaves presumably weren't.

I agree it is probably a culture thing, but society as a whole created that culture.

jernfrost3• 10 years ago

People often disregard this very important point. The original free blacks of the north did quite well. Noticeably better than the Irish e.g. Black culture in the north got destroyed when the large migration of former slaves migrated north. They took with them a bad culture. Slaves learn quickly e.g. that putting in an extra effort is never good for you. It doesn't pay of.

Adam Smith remarked hundreds of years ago how slave labour is very inefficient because nobody works efficient or hard when they don't do it out of free will and their own benefit but rather to the benefit of others. Roman agriculture suffered immensely for this in the latter years as slave estates started taking over.

So black in the south had grown up over generations in a culture which did not reward hard work and which actively discouraged education.

It seems rather offensive when people casually just say the poor work ethic and attitudes towards education among many blacks in the US is their communities problem. How about white people's responsibility for creating this culture in the first place?

It is like abusing a person for years and then as soon as you stop the abuse you expect the person to instantly become and upstanding citizen.

bo10242• 10 years ago

Yes: you are missing the history of the United States. This was most of the point of the article: Black people disproportionately live in poverty (not to mention the history of discrimination in this country), and the effects of living in poverty are extremely harmful. Your post seems to be missing the history of human slavery in the United States, the subsequent history of discrimination, and the conditions it created whose effects and legacy are still very strong today. You can't control for these factors by comparing to other minority immigrant groups!!

One can argue that there are negative cultural effects, but it's a chicken-and-egg issue because history has created conditions for cultures of e.g. gangs and violence to arise. Similarly, the solution must address both the chicken and the egg. Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture.

How does one create a culture that favors education when inner-city schools provide useless educations and are filled with gang violence, when there is little hope of using education for good? How does one create a "hard working" culture when the best "jobs" that seem realistically available are selling drugs, or when hard work fails to be rewarded due to discrimination? How does one create a culture of "loyal to family" when 73% of black children live in single-parent households (compared to 25% of white children)? (source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/... )

All I can do in closing is suggest that, if you really want to understand your question "why are blacks not doing well", you should read some history, studies/statistics, and accounts of what life is currently like for blacks in the US.

(Edited to change the source of the data.)

eumoria• 10 years ago

I live in a ~70% black neighborhood in NYC and the crack epidemic[0] of the late 80s into the 90s really destroyed a lot of the healthy culture that americans of african descent cherished through the 60s and 70s. Older guys on my block describe it like a warzone and, while I'm sure slightly hyperbolic, really took its toll on everyone there. There's so many factors here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic

BurningFrog• 10 years ago

Your comment about "the black community needs to address" black culture, while perhaps well-intentioned, is the sort of argument historically commonly used by powerful whites to justify a "not my problem" philosophy toward black poverty and living conditions that create a negative culture.

This is a terrible argument. Statements are not automatically false because awful people agree with them. If Hitler thinks 2+2=4, decent people are not forced to choose 3 or 5.

It seems to me that only black people can change black culture. Who else would do it? How?

jernfrost3• 10 years ago

The discrimination against other minorities is nothing like the discrimination blacks have faced and still face. I am white and I got half asian kids, but when I talk to a white mom with half black kids, the kind of stuff her kids has to deal with is nothing like what I deal with. Or rather I don't deal with anything.

Affirmative action can't compensate, when most of your success in life depends on what happens the early years of your life. If you spend all your first years in shitty schools, shitty preschool and shitty neighborhoods, some late in life Affirmative action isn't going to make any difference.

mikeash• 10 years ago

"I might be missing something else."

The whole "centuries of brutal slavery" thing is an obvious and rather curious omission in your list.

TheCoelacanth• 10 years ago

Also, the hundred years of overt discrimination and decades of covert discrimination that followed that.

ausjke2• 10 years ago

Yes slavery and unfairly treated in the past combined are hurting blacks very much, but we can't go back and change history. My point is that new immigrants came here with nothing can earn a decent life with hard working , put education first etc, why local blacks can not reboot themselves gradually over these years? I am just thinking without a grass root level from within to change the culture, it will be very difficult to better the situation.

Especially in the hi-tech era, without proper education, the only thing left will be extreme riot, or live on food stamp for life.

I have been thinking about adopting a black kid myself, to give him/her the best education possible and the culture I believe in, I may do that sometime.

kaonashi• 10 years ago

I have been thinking about adopting a black kid myself, to give him/her the best education possible and the culture I believe in, I may do that sometime.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

known• 10 years ago

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433866

batat• 10 years ago

Expected to see something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt–Igoe story.

galfarragem• 10 years ago

Empirically (aka having grown up in a poor neighbourhood) I would say that during infancy it doesn't matter much, it mostly depends on your parents background: they are the largest influence on you. It really starts to hurt is during teenage years when kids get independent. Then one of two situations use to happen: the environment pushes them down or they remove themselves from it and grow lonely. None of the options is optimal.

Law 10: Infection: avoid the unhappy and the unlucky. -- Robert Greene (48 laws of power)

Law 18: Do not build fortresses to protect yourself – isolation is dangerous -- Robert Greene (48 laws of power)

The effects of living in a poor neighborhood

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