Inequality Begets Inequality
Pete Davis mentions a new book that sounds interesting. He observes that we like to think of the United States as a land of opportunity, “but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise.”
That’s what we like to think, but a new book, Creating an Opportunity Society, by Ron Haskins and Belle Sawhill of the Brookings Institution proves otherwise. They took a close look at intergenerational mobility and found that 42% of American men with fathers in the bottom income quintile remain there as compared to: Denmark, 25%; Sweden, 26%; Finland, 28%; Norway, 28%; and the United Kingdom, 30%. They present a wealth of new and old research evidence to support the conclusion that if you’re born poor in America, you’re likely to remain poor.
This basic result has been known for quite some time, at least in liberal circles (conservatives like Greg Mankiw believe the U.S. is ruled by a genetic aristocracy). And the interpretation seems pretty clear. The high level of income inequality in the United States leads to highly unequal opportunities for American children, whereas the low levels of income inequality in Nordic countries lead to more equal outcomes.
Davis says the book “is not a liberal polemic,” but I’m not really sure where else any analysis of this issue would lead you. One of the co-authors, Ron Haskins, has definite conservative credentials so I’ll be interested to see what kind of conservative ideas are in here, but “make America more like Sweden” doesn’t strike me as a very promising foundation for bipartisanship.
85 Responses to “Inequality Begets Inequality”
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October 29th, 2009 at 10:49 am
David Runciman review of The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
October 29th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Do poor Danes and Swedes have to attend Democrat-run inner city schools?
October 29th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Ron Haskins was the intellectual father of the welfare reform bill that treated LEGAL immigrants the same as illegal aliens.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:01 am
The book sounds interesting, but I think that quote is refuting something few people believe. It’s usually not stated quite this starkly, but for me the general “common knowledge” myth has always been that the US has both very few barriers to advancement but at the same time has a unique underclass problem due to current and historical racism.
Low advancement from the bottom quintile doesn’t upset that notion at all. I’d be very curious to see the numbers for the other quintiles, or the numbers for immigrants only (the success of immigrants being a very large portion of the American Dream mythology).
October 29th, 2009 at 11:01 am
MY: Davis says the book “is not a liberal polemic,” but I’m not really sure where else any analysis of this issue would lead you.
Reality is a liberal polemic.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Ron Haskins was the intellectual father of the welfare reform bill
Yeah that was really naive (or politically cyncial take your pick) for Bill Clinton to do welfare reform. Did he believe unemployment would remain low forwever?
How are you going to move people from welfare to work when unemployment is at 10%?
It’s racist claptrap, just like Bob Roddis’s brain farts and Mankiw’s eugenitcs and Bernstein’s “bell curve.”
October 29th, 2009 at 11:09 am
What a stupid comparison. The US has 300 million people and the countries in Europe we’re compared to here have less than a third that number combined. Norway is an oil-state and thus should never be compared to anyone except other oil-rich, small population countries. You can get ahead in the US just as easily as in the European paradise countries. We just have a lot more poor people – and rich people and middle income people. We ain’t Europe and Europe ain’t us.
What do liberals expect to achieve by constantly trashing their own country?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:20 am
N: I notice you didn’t mention the UK, which is a pretty big, complicated country.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:21 am
@7. N: What do liberals expect to achieve by constantly trashing their own country?
We believe Sweden and Norway are much more patriotic than America’s elite who are the ones being trashed here. America’s elite treat the rest of America as disposable and takes them for granted.
The Swedes and Norse show much more solidarity and patriotic nationalism.
Not all of us are syncophants like you.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:21 am
What do liberals expect [or maybe only hope] to achieve by constantly trashing their own country?
A better country, with as much opportunity for upward mobility as is afforded by Britain, France, or Germany.
What do conservatives expect to achieve by blinking reality?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Do poor Danes and Swedes have to attend Democrat-run inner city schools?
Nope they go to private charter schools run by Ron Paul.
Okay, actually they go to schools run by socialists.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Poptarts, given the degree to which the united states has used the prison system to mitigate unemployment, he probably did.
It worked for a while, sending people to prison to remove them from the labor force and to provide correctional jobs and dollars. It was never really going to be a recipe for a vibrant or strong society, but the elite hoped it would allow them to keep killing jobs and padding their own profit margins without ever facing serious social unrest.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:25 am
We just have a lot more poor people – and rich people and middle income people.
The raw numbers have nothing to do with the percentages, and the fact is that the U.S. does have a much higher percentage of poor people than other industrialized Western nations. Why do you think that is?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:27 am
Lib, what do you hope to achieve by ignoring the fact that this country is falling apart? Do you think faerie magic will make all of our problems go away? Do you just not give a damn about the future of this country so long as you can pretend the present is hunky dory?
Basically, why do you hate America, it’s people, and our way of life? I don’t care about whatever fantasies you have in your head about evil socialist tyranny, America has real problems and your comic-book delusions are killing her.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:28 am
parents, unfettered, will attempt to attain as much relative advantage for their children. is this principle under question?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Data says otherwise, and you don’t even try to refute it save for Norway. “We’re bigger” isn’t a counter-argument to a problem phrased in percentage terms.
A better country, obviously.
I’m not content for America to be second-rate. Why are you?
October 29th, 2009 at 11:29 am
You can get ahead in the US just as easily as in the European paradise countries.
No, you can’t. See the original post.
We just have a lot more poor people – and rich people and middle income people.
And a smaller percentage of those poor people move into the middle class.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:30 am
You can get ahead in the US just as easily as in the European paradise countries. We just have a lot more poor people – and rich people and middle income people
Have conservatives decided that percentages are a liberal invention to be shunned? e.g. O’Reilly?
http://www.shockmd.com/2009/08/04/bill-oreilly-has-to-learn-his-maths/
So because the US has more people of all kinds, percentage-based comparisons don’t apply? A generous interpretation would be that you’re merely saying these European countries are too small to be statistically significant. Then again that’s nonsense as well.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:32 am
parents, unfettered, will attempt to attain as much relative advantage for their children. is this principle under question?
Huh? A large minority of parents couldn’t care less about their kids. That’s why many kids end up so disadvantaged. Their parents are highly disfunctional and are barely able to care for themselfes, let alone their children.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:40 am
no sensible person would fail to admit that there is a significant heriditary underclass in this country. i would argue that there is no real legitimate right-left debate about this. the real debate is over how best to help those trapped in the bottom quintile.
this is what makes the constant liberal comparisons to the scandinavian countries so frustrating. do you guys really believe that all you have to do is raise taxes, increase regulation, and add new bureaucracies, and viola! you’ve created utopia? they tried that in the 1960s and the results were detroit, newark, and DC, not denmark, sweeden, and norway.
to make statistical comparisons with of the bottom quintile in america with those in other countries without taking into account some very prescient cultural issues is to go through life with blinders on.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Diminished class mobility *doesn’t* disprove the “land of opportunity” characterization. There are plenty of alternate hypotheses that also explain the data, e.g. that instead of institutional and/or social barriers to advancement, there is some inherent difference in the composition of US population vs. European population. The correct answer is probably some mix of all of them.
Also, the swipe at Mankiw is unwarranted; it’s not really disputable that intelligence* is to some degree inheritable, and in the US there is a very high propensity for people to marry within their intelligence range. Therefore the genetic component probably isn’t ignorable.
Actually, part of the difference between the US and Europe may be explainable by that last fact alone, if Europe doesn’t have the same high propensity…
*here used as a proxy for “intellectual talent that is useful for making money”, not IQ.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Soullite:
It worked for a while, sending people to prison to remove them from the labor force and to provide correctional jobs and dollars. It was never really going to be a recipe for a vibrant or strong society, but the elite hoped it would allow them to keep killing jobs and padding their own profit margins without ever facing serious social unrest.
I’ve read in the newspapers over and over again the sad story of some small town where the good manufacturing jobs are gone so the struggling local government is trying to get a prison or a riverboat casino. And yet in California as elsewhere the prisons are so ridicuously overcrowded that the courts are getting involved.
All of Hector’s epithets towards mythological hipsters could be said of America’s elite. Nihilistic, selfish, vain, lacking in moral fiber, etc. etc. Obama’s election contradicts this somewhat but still.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:53 am
and in the US there is a very high propensity for people to marry within their intelligence range
Actually, it’s more within those of similar social status, not simple intelligence.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Uh, I’m no social scientist but comparing the United States to countries like Norway and Sweden on this sort of thing seems to be of limited utility. Just off the top of my head, the differing levels of population growth and immigration could go a long way toward explaining the differing results.
Mike
October 29th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I don’t think Michael Barone went far enough with his concept of ‘hard America and soft America’, contrasted with Europe, Japan and to an increasing degree, China and India.
In Europe and Japan, Barone argued, the school systems are harsh. Kids who show promise are often driven, even brutally, to succeed; selected young and systematically culled in a strictly heirarchical and unforgiving system.
Then they get jobs which are generally featherbeds by American standards — with some quirks, like the company songs in Japan, but with health care, vacations, and retirement programs that are downright socialist compared with ours.
So they’ve got hard schools and soft jobs.
In America, our schools are so soft it’s almost impossible to exaggerate — grammar school soccer teams that finish fourth get trophies bigger than the kids, whole curriculums are designed around improving self-esteem more than instruction in basic intellectual skills, etc.
Then the American kids go out and get jobs, where their education is completed by a Boss who tells ‘em bluntly ‘get here on time, get it done — or get out’.
We have soft schools and hard work.
Barone argues that this odd mirroring is why it is America that consistently out-innovates and out-produces the rest of the world. We’re far more independent, entrepreneurial, and competitive.
But I don’t think he goes far enough: the way Americans treat the rich is an extension of the soft school system, NOT the harsh way we regard work as a sink or swim proposition.
The way we treat the poor is often harsh like work rather than (sometimes) intelligently soft, like schooling.
One of the best programs I know teaches young criminals HOW to work — paying ‘em minimum wage to show up on time, giving ‘em small hourly raises when they do things right. It teaches ‘em math through self-interest — if you’re gonna bid on a job to make money, you have to know how much its gonna cost for materials, and how many guys are gonna work how long for how much: bid too high, you don’t get the job, bid low, and you lose money on it.
The program disciplines kids in the simplest way — they use power tools. Most young criminals have problems with authority — ain’t nothing that impresses you with the importance of paying attention when The Man talks, like turning on a 48″ bandsaw.
So I don’t think the basic impulse to reform welfare was a bad thing. I objected to the way Haskins (and Clinton) debased citizenship to do it.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
How to avoid comparing the US to Europe:
1. Show some European countries have better outcomes in X, and different policies in X that could be emulated
2. …
3. Black people
October 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
the real debate is over how best to help those trapped in the bottom quintile.
Assuming those at the bottom want to be helped. The per capita GDP in Mississippi is $24,518 the per capita in Massachusetts is $50,735. If you told the voters of MS – If you adopted more MA like policies and valued education as highly as MA you might double you income. They would tell you they don’t want to be a bunch of rich, over educated, liberal fags. They are happy being ignorant and poor.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
I’m not content for America to be second-rate. Why are you?
Liberals love their country like New Yorkers love the Yankees. Conservatives love their country like Chicagoans love the Cubs.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
You know, I bet the lowest quintile has a far higher proportion of African Americans than other quintiles. And I bet African Americans make up an even larger percentage of those 42% of men who don’t advance up the social ladder.
This is a major problem. But it isn’t necessarily a problem with our economic structure. A lack of African American social mobility could be due to a host of factors, including latent racism. I just think it is worth looking at, because if my hunch is right then we may end up trying to fix the wrong problem.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
And their comparative records are comparable.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
if you’re born poor in America, you’re likely to remain poor
Sorry, but if 42% of those born in the bottom quintile stay there, then 58% do not.
Which means that if you’re born poor in America, you’re unlikely to remain poor. More likely than in some other countries, but still unlikely.
… Tho the quintile thing is a bit odd. If 75% of Swedes born in the bottom aren’t there any more, then who took their place?
October 29th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
The US (10%) has a lower percentage of immigrants than Sweden (12%).
US annual growth rate is 0.93%, while Swedens is 0.45%. Considering the spread in other countries runs from +5%, I’d say that the growth rates for the US and Sweden are not qualitatively different.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
“Considering the spread in other countries runs from +5%…” to <-2%…
Left that out somehow.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
What, iq racism again? And not from the same person as usual?
October 29th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
to make statistical comparisons with of the bottom quintile in america with those in other countries without taking into account some very prescient cultural issues is to go through life with blinders on.
This is true. Because, as we all know, other countries do not have cultural issues of their own….
October 29th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
… Tho the quintile thing is a bit odd. If 75% of Swedes born in the bottom aren’t there any more, then who took their place?
Think really hard…
It is amazing to get a figure as low as 25%, the Swedish society is very close to the Rawls ideal of justice; not even considering inequality, just “fairness”.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Actually, part of the difference between the US and Europe may be explainable by that last fact alone, if Europe doesn’t have the same high propensity…
Mighty big “if”. People in Europe marry within their general intelligence range as well.
October 29th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Exactly how is it a superior result that some countries intergenerational income quitiles map more cloesly than other countries? It is just as easy and just as accurate to claim that countries like Sweden are failures in that their most advantaged citizens are less capable of transmitting the necessary skills and attitudes to the next generation. These types of studies are ridiculous: in every country 20% of the population in in the bottom quintile, just like 10% are in the top decile.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
The easiest way to dramatically increase intergenerational income mobility in the US would be a massive income transfer from rich states to poor states.
There are many areas of this country where people are happy and proud to be poor just as long as they have Jesus and their guns. I doubt such groups exist much in Northern Europe.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Eric -
It’s a superior result for people who value economic and class mobility, and count it as a good thing. If you don’t especially value economic and class mobility, for whatever reason – if, for example, you think that my economic/social situation is largely determined by circumstances about my birth, and you also happen to think that this is ok, or the proper state of affairs* – then presumably it’s not a valuable statistic.
The point is that lots of American rhetoric implies that one of this country’s virtues is class mobility which, in fact, it doesn’t have in comparison to our international peers, for whatever that’s worth.
* Whether you believe in the moral importance of caste separation, or you just think the factors of economic success are largely hereditary and presume that a few generations have been sufficient to sort out much of the noise, so that everyone’s settled to the place where they belong.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
These types of studies are ridiculous: in every country 20% of the population in in the bottom quintile, just like 10% are in the top decile.
Wow. It seems you didn’t understand the post.
These types of studies are useful because they push back against the myth of “Land of Opportunity” and right-wing cliches on “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps”.
There are many areas of this country where people are happy and proud to be poor just as long as they have Jesus and their guns.
Where?
October 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
for me the general “common knowledge” myth has always been that the US has both very few barriers to advancement but at the same time has a unique underclass problem due to current and historical racism…Low advancement from the bottom quintile doesn’t upset that notion at all.
Woof-Woof: Of course it does, pretty much by definition. If there were “very few barriers to advancement” we would not have such “low advancement from the bottom quintile.” I mean, do you think poor people enjoy living in dangerous neighborhoods, or having inadequate access to healthcare?
Nobody’s saying it’s impossible for a poor person to move up the latter in America — and lots of people do (when you’re talking about the US, you pretty much can always say “lots of so and so, given the country’s huge size). The point is, on average Americans aren’t as likely to be able to do this as the residents of wealthy European countries.
What is it about conservativesx and their utter lack of ability to see their country for what it is, warts and all? Don’t they love their country enough to A) get outraged when it has to settle for a second-rate anything? and, B) Doesn’t that motivate them to want to make, you know, improvements?
You can get ahead in the US just as easily as in the European paradise countries.
N: this is demonstrably false. The intellectually honest approach for you to take would be to say that you believe lack of socioeconomic mobility is a feature, not a bug, of the American political economy.
do you guys really believe that all you have to do is raise taxes, increase regulation, and add new bureaucracies, and viola! you’ve created utopia? they tried that in the 1960s and the results were detroit, newark, and DC, not denmark, sweeden, and norway.
j r: Nonsense. It is true that anti-poverty programs were expanded in the 60s. It is also true that this expansion did much good. But the larger point is, the safety net in the US has never approached the robustness and comprehensives of what’s done in the Nordic countries, or of Western Europe in general. Liberals do, perhaps, share some measure of that blame, in (so I’m given to understand) not emphasizing universal programs in favor of programs targeting only the poor: it’s a truism, but it’s nonetheless true, that broad-based programs open to universal or near-universal participation tend (naturally!) to maintain broad support. When the US has followed this approach, as in the case of, say, Social Security or Medicare or state support for higher education, the results have been excellent. One of the bromides employed by anti-welfare state reactionaries has been the old opinion about how “you just can’t throw money at XYZ.” I would argue, though, that, as unpalatable as such a strategy sounds, that’s in fact what you’ve got to do if you’re serious about things like poverty reduction and socioeconomic mobility. I’m talking big, expensive programs targeting the entire population. Like universal healthcare. Universal child benefit. Fully-funded national daycare. No, not cheap. But also not impossibly expensive given the evidence on display in other rich countries.
Also, the swipe at Mankiw is unwarranted; it’s not really disputable that intelligence* is to some degree inheritable, and in the US there is a very high propensity for people to marry within their intelligence range.
Alex: It most certainly is “disputable” — especially when you use an umbrella term like “intelligence.” If you want to go with “cognitive function” I’m on board to the extent that there’s clearly a genetic element involved; but what people who go on about such things rarely bother to mention, if they’re aware of it at all, is that there’s also a high degree of mutability involved. Pretty clearly, a child born in poverty to “low IQ” parents would test for a higher IQ at, say, age ten, if he/she were adopted in early infancy by an affluent “high IQ” household — than he/she would without the adoption.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
<i.There are many areas of this country where people are happy and proud to be poor just as long as they have Jesus and their guns.
Where?
Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina to name just a few. Not that they wouldnt’ want to be richer if they could keep things the same. But, tell them they’d have to put a higher value on education than they do on football or Jesus or their guns and they wouldn’t be interested.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
I mean, do you think poor people enjoy living in dangerous neighborhoods, or having inadequate access to healthcare?
Sure, if the alternative is changing their values. Many people are happy to make 24k in rural Mississippi and wouldn’t change it for the world. They would be especially reluctant to change if those changes required them to be more like those they despise.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
But, tell them they’d have to put a higher value on education than they do on football or Jesus or their guns and they wouldn’t be interested.
The choice is rarely presented to voters in those terms. And what should poor people in those states do, vote Democrat (which the majority of them do by the way), and elect a Blue Dog who will sell them to the highest bidder as soon as he gets to DC?
Besides, a lot of people thought lower taxes and deregulation would help even the little guy by “lifting all the boats”: not only ‘Club for Growth’ radicals but many (neo)liberals like Rubin and Summers. Now the “Washington consensus” has fallen, and I expect even Republicans will face a lot of populist, anti-corporation rage in the future. See the rise of Huckabee and Palin as a sign.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Many people are happy to make 24k in rural Mississippi and wouldn’t change it for the world. They would be especially reluctant to change if those changes required them to be more like those they despise.
Do you have any evidence for all those claims? A poll perhaps: “Would you give up your guns for $1M?”.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Why oh why,
Is it at all possible that some poor and working class people actually prefer the lifestyle and values of Mississippi to those of Massachusetts, with all that entails?
I certainly don’t share their preferences, but I can understand why they might have them.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
A poll perhaps
Even better than poll numbers we have election results, look the politicians they have elected and the policies those politicians have pursued.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Bob Roddis Says:
“Do poor Danes and Swedes have to attend Democrat-run inner city schools?”
No. They attend schools which are run by people who think of the US Democratic Party as the extreme *right* edge of the political spectrum.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“The US (10%) has a lower percentage of immigrants than Sweden (12%).”
Sweden. Population 9 million, 1.8 million immigrants.
U.S. Population 300 million, 30 million immigrants.
Yeah, you should really compare the two for insightful analysis.
Mike
October 29th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Even better than poll numbers we have election results, look the politicians they have elected and the policies those politicians have pursued.
Because Blue Dogs, many of them pro-life and gun-rights fanatics, represent the “lifestyle and values” of Massachusetts?
Voting for Democrats in the South doesn’t mean what you think. Hell, I wonder why anybody would vote for some of those guys, among the most corrupt in DC.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Conservatives love America like Chicago loves the Cubs. You mean, even though the Cubs habitually lose, the fans sell out the stadium, refusing to hold management accountable? Hm..maybe the Cubs/Conservatives analogy holds.
October 29th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Because Blue Dogs, many of them pro-life and gun-rights fanatics, represent the “lifestyle and values” of Massachusetts?
No, they represent the “lifestyle and values” of Mississippi, that’s why they get elected.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/preps/football/2004-10-05-spending-cover_x.htm
Given the choice between beefing up the science curriculum or building a new $20 million high school football stadium – they chose the stadium.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Why oh why:
Now the “Washington consensus” has fallen, and I expect even Republicans will face a lot of populist, anti-corporation rage in the future. See the rise of Huckabee and Palin as a sign.
Exactly. All of the right wing radio hosts like Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity, FOX, all of the Days of Rage in August about Death Panels and killing granny is about redirecting the anger of the poor and working poor and struggling middle class away from their rightful targets towards red herrings and scapegoats. It’s all about muddying the waters and confusing the uneducated.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
One question that occurs to me: is there much or any differential in the rate of reproduction among the quintiles? For example, if the top quintile were having 80% of offspring, then we could have at least 75% of people born in the top quintile moving to other quintiles, but no one from any other quintile moving to the top. Likewise, if the bottom quintile were having 80% of the offspring, 75% would move to other quintiles, and only 25% would stay in the bottom quintile, but that wouldn’t really indicate social mobility so much as arithmetic necessity. Obviously, my numbers are really extreme, and not really related to reality, but I’m wondering to what degree the distribution of offspring differs from 20%/20%/20%/20%/20%.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Many people are happy to make 24k in rural Mississippi and wouldn’t change it for the world. They would be especially reluctant to change if those changes required them to be more like those they despise.
No doubt it’s true that culturally conservative, working class southern whites wouldn’t want “changes that required them to be more like those they despise.” But why, exactly, would a significantly more robust and effective safety net do that?
In the first place I doubt somebody making $24K would be taking home less money if the US were to import Danish tax and spend policies lock, stock and barrel. Somebody making $150K? Sure. But 24 grand? I doubt it. Especially if they’re currently having money deducted for health insurance.
Beyond that, they’d still be free to go to the highly reactionary church of their choice; and own guns; and root for ‘Bama or Ole Miss or whomever; and fantasize about Sarah Palin; and prepare for the rapture. It’s just that they’d now being engaging in these activities while having more economic security. What’s not to love?
October 29th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
It might be worthy to also compare what it’s like to live in the bottom quintile, in the US vs in Denmark, Sweden, etc.
That is, every society has a bottom quintile. But in some societies the bottom quintile live with greater security and comfort than in others.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
jasper,
i vehemently disagree with just about everything you’ve proposed, but i do applaud your honesty. you’re not hiding behind that “don’t you care about the children/poor people” that many on the left deploy anytime someone expresses reservations about increasing the size and scope of government.
the safety net in the US has never approached the robustness and comprehensives of what’s done in the Nordic countries
you’re right. and in being right, you’re essentially proving my point. during that time period those areas with the constituencies most amenable to the idea (ie cities) began raising taxes in order to provide more social services to the poor and more public services in general. what was the eventual result? people began to realize that they were getting hit with a simultaneously increasing tax burden and decreasing quality of public services. what did they do? those that could voted with their feet and moved to places with less taxes and better services. the cities lost their tax base and went to shit during the 70s and 80s.
now you can argue that making everything national would solve that problem, but what makes you think there is widespread political will for that sort of thing? the fact that there is in some european countries is interesting to think about, but it isn’t going to help you turn us into them.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
it’s interesting that everytime sailor or someone else makes mention of genetic or cultural issues in regards to inequality they are almost immediately dismisses as racist or whatever else. and yet…
tell them they’d have to put a higher value on education than they do on football or Jesus or their guns and they wouldn’t be interested.
if someone said “tell them in the inner city to put a higher value on education than they do on fancy sneakers and their entitlement checks…” that certainly wouldn’t be acceptable, so why is what jmo said?
it must be great to be so progressive and open-minded.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
It would be interesting to get those statistics for NJ or MA. Perhaps some states are not so different from Sweden after all.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Alex: It most certainly is “disputable” — especially when you use an umbrella term like “intelligence.” If you want to go with “cognitive function” I’m on board to the extent that there’s clearly a genetic element involved; but what people who go on about such things rarely bother to mention, if they’re aware of it at all, is that there’s also a high degree of mutability involved. Pretty clearly, a child born in poverty to “low IQ” parents would test for a higher IQ at, say, age ten, if he/she were adopted in early infancy by an affluent “high IQ” household — than he/she would without the adoption.
jasper: I specified that I was using “intelligence” as a proxy for “talent that is useful for making money”, not as an umbrella term; I also didn’t deny that there are many other factors that determine it. But it is indisputable that there is some genetic inherited component of nontrivial magnitude.
Of course, all of my arguments ended up being pointless because I didn’t know about the single obvious explanatory variable: the difference in immigration rates.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
JR,
Fancy sneakers and basketball/football and guns – same idea. The pathologies of the rural poor and urban poor have much in common.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I’d like to suggest that the numbers presented don’t meet well with the phrase “likely to remain poor.”
A 42% remainder rate means a 58% rate of movement. That’s a statistic that says you are slightly more likely to move outta poverty than to stay in it: approximately 6 outta the next 10 babies born poor can be expected to NOT REMAIN poor. There is no inference that can be made that makes the phrase “likely to remain poor ” true.
What is true is that those who are born into poverty in other countries are MORE likely to move outta poverty, between 70 and 75 percent, than those born in the US. But it is NOT TRUE that if you are born in poverty in the US, you are “likely” to stay there.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
[...] in Daily life, Government at 11:43 am by LeisureGuy Matthew Yglesias: Pete Davis mentions a new book that sounds interesting. He observes that we like to think of the [...]
October 29th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
MBunge: “The US (10%) has a lower percentage of immigrants than Sweden (12%).”
Sweden. Population 9 million, 1.8 million immigrants.
U.S. Population 300 million, 30 million immigrants.
Maybe you just misread 12% as 20%, but. . .MATH FAIL.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Sweden. Population 9 million, 1.8 million immigrants.
Aren’t the vast majority of those 1.8 million immigrants – Finns?
October 29th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Let’s look at the UK, for a moment, with its supposedly class-ridden society.
If you grow up poor in Britain, your family’s not going to be left destitute by illness, and you’re not going to be left with a large pile of student debt, should you be smart or capable enough to get into college, particularly for a medical or law degree.
Barone argues that this odd mirroring is why it is America that consistently out-innovates and out-produces the rest of the world. We’re far more independent, entrepreneurial, and competitive.
Explain how you get from “get here on time and do what you’re told or you’re out” to “independent, entrepreneurial and competitive”.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
you’re not going to be left with a large pile of student debt, should you be smart or capable enough to get into college,
Yes, but no matter how smart you are if you come from the wrong background you won’t be allowed into the elite.
Example:
The father of Barclays Chairman Marcus Agius was the Chairman of Schroders. The father of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein was a postal clerk.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
69. Well, thank goodness our previous President earned his high position through hard work and intelligence rather than family connections. Whew.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Pete,
And what about our current President?
October 29th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Yes, but no matter how smart you are if you come from the wrong background you won’t be allowed into the elite [in Britain].
I think this is increasingly untrue. The upper class, that is, people with inherited land or titles or businesses, who often make lots of their money from rents rather than profits or salaries, for whom Harrow is almost as good as Eton, is different from the upper end of the upper-middle class less in terms of wealth and power but in terms of a cultural prestige that is becoming increasingly disregarded in British society. The old upper class elite still is resistant to letting children of Bangladeshi immigrants who went to a state school and then got into Oxbridge on their merits join them socially, but the child of the Bangladeshi immigrants probably doesn’t care and neither do many other people.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Yes, but no matter how smart you are if you come from the wrong background you won’t be allowed into the elite.
Margaret Thatcher’s parents were grocers. Tony Blair’s parents were Glasgow shipyard workers.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Shorter jmo: in America you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become CEO of Goldman Sachs no matter what the statistics say.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Shorter jmo: in America you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become CEO of Goldman Sachs no matter what the statistics say.
Obviously you can. Ken Lewis was raised by a single mom who worked as nurse. But, some people value guns and football or fancy sneakers and basketball more than academic and financial achievement – and it’s a free country and that is their right. I don’t think it should be the duty of the government to disabuse people of their ignorant, but dearly held, notions.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
But jmo, do you agree that America is not the Land of Opportunity and that in fact it is better to grow up in Britain if you are poor and want to climb up the social ladder? Because you seem to hold dearly ignorant notions of your own.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
I’d say it was easier in America. There is just a larger percentage of the population that just doesn’t want to try. Indeed, often in American those in the lowest quintine don’t wish to move up because they are comfortable with the values that keep them in poverty i.e. a $20 million high school football stadium vs. a $20 million science complex.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
What Jason L. said. It’s far easier — in terms of economic barriers to entry — for a smart and capable British child of working-class parents to get into Oxbridge than for an American child of comparable talent and background to get into a Ivy or similar top-ranking college, even if you adjust for population. But that’s deceptively hyper-focused.
The bottom rungs of the ladder are a lot greasier in the US, and it’s cheap and easy to pretend that it’s a feature of a vulgar social Calvinism.
they are comfortable with the values that keep them in poverty i.e. a $20 million high school football stadium vs. a $20 million science complex.
That expansive ‘they’ carries a lot more weight than it supports.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
It’s far easier — in terms of economic barriers to entry — for a smart and capable British child of working-class parents to get into Oxbridge than for an American child of comparable talent and background to get into a Ivy or similar top-ranking college
You do know that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford are all free if your family makes less than 60k a year?
October 29th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
You do know that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford are all free if your family makes less than 60k a year?
You do know that you have to get admitted into them first? Which means you have to have done well enough in high school to be in the top 0.1% of students in the country, and people who do that well usually have had lots of support.
Of course it’s possible for a poor kid to get into Harvard — but for every poor kid I knew there, I knew ten whose parents were doctors, lawyers or investment bankers.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
You do know that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford are all free if your family makes less than 60k a year?
Yeah. And how many current students does that apply to?
October 29th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Two-thirds of Harvard undergraduates receive some form of financial aid, including scholarships, loans, and jobs. The average total student package will likely be more than $33,000, more than 70 percent of the total cost of attendance.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
It’s racist claptrap, just like Bob Roddis’s brain farts and Mankiw’s eugenitcs and Bernstein’s “bell curve.”
Herrstein, I think you mean.
You can get ahead in the US just as easily as in the European paradise countries. We just have a lot more poor people
I don’t know whether this is true or not. The fact that people can more easily move between quintiles in Furope than the U.S. does not necessarily mean that they are more upwardly mobile in absolute terms. It could just mean that the quintiles are not as far apart.
If we measured upward mobility in terms of increase in income, the results could be very different. It’s possible that the main reason for the higher percentile mobility is due to the fact that an increase in income of, say, 10%, will move, for example, a 10th percentile person to the 15th percentile here, while it would move someone up tothe 30th percentile there. (Note: I’m illustrating a point here. These figures are made up to illustrate a possible explanation).
October 29th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
As far as Sweden’s immigration issue goes, what actual percentage of Swedes are what ethnicity, and how long has that been the case? The fact that a lot of Syrians or Iraqis have moved to Sweden in the past ten years does not tell us much about their long-term impact on Sweden’s welfare state.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Which means you have to have done well enough in high school to be in the top 0.1%
Well, no, clearly you don’t have to be in the top one-thousandth of American high school students to get into a top university — let’s not exaggerate.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter of how difficult it is for US high school grads to get into a top university: America has a pretty substantial capacity in this area, even adjusted for population. There have got to be several dozen schools that would legitimately be considered reasonably prestigious “name” schools. And it can’t can’t be a picnic trying to get into Oxbridge.
I think in the US (vis a via Europe/Australia/Canada/Japan) it’s more the fact that a lot of young people simply don’t get to the point where they can get into any school, period, because they don’t graduate high school. Or they enter the criminal justice system. Or they die violent deaths. Or, when they do get into a college/university, they don’t graduate. And, whether or not they graduate, they borrow vast sums and become hugely indebted, thus guaranteeing themselves a slow start.
October 30th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
jmo (known in some circles as Marie Antoinette), thanks for the canned cultural observations. I’m happy you have such an inside line on what the poor and downtrodden want (btw, are you just referring to poor white Mississipians or are you including poor African-American Mississipians in your ridiculous generalizations?).
Seriously, do you neo-liberals realize how incredibly supremacist you sound sometimes? Having lived in Europe (France), I can tell you there is quite a bit of social and class mobility there, and one of the big differences is that the bottom ‘quintile’ has a degree of support and material comfort and security that is orders of magnitude different from the horrific situation that millions of virtually destitute Americans find themselves in, where they can literally die from lack of adequate health-care or malnutrition, lack of basic amenities, etc.
And to the genetic intelligence Aristocrats out there, poor American children often don’t have an adequate diet or clothing which affects their ability to concentrate in class, stay awake, and so on. Environmental factors can have a definite influence on ‘intelligence’ development, not to mention the fact that in contemporary American culture ‘intelligence’ often is merely synonymous with facility at making money and/or willingness to adapt and conform to existing institutional modes, systems, however depraved or corrupt. Our definition of ‘intelligence’ is incredibly impoverished and superficial, and frankly soulless. The great Enlightenment thinkers would be rolling in their graves. The contemporary American establishment icon of an ‘intelligent’ person is someone like Bill Gates or a corporate Wall Street raider, NOT the older deeper understanding of the term embodied, say, in an Immanuel Kant or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or in great inventors like Thomas Edison or Karl Benz.