> Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one factor clearly stands out in their study: family structure. By their reckoning, when it comes to mobility, “the strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of children with single parents.” They find that children raised in communities with high percentages of single mothers are significantly less likely to experience absolute and relative mobility.
This likely one of the reasons why Asian kids raised in the bottom 1/5 have a 25% chance of ending up in the top 1/5 as adults, versus 11% for white kids. Asians have by far the lowest rates of single parent families, across the income spectrum.
> Poor people in the west tend to have less stable family structures, it has nothing to do with social norms and everything to do with money. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44127459
Saying it has “everything to do with money” is a pretty remarkable assertion given that the single parenthood gap between classes is growing even as everyone gets richer in absolute terms, and is extremely low in countries that are very poor in absolute terms.
I’m not saying we should turn a blind eye to anything. But we should be cautious about undermining institutions and hierarchies that may be doing more good than harm because we’re only fixated on the harm. And education and cognitive elites should be especially careful not to project their own experiences rest of society.
Chetty also notes that his study can't be used to determine whether single parent families are a cause or an effect. Racial segregation and quality of schooling are also noted as being correlated with lower social mobility in that study.
I object to the notion that there is some acceptable level of violence and abuse we need to tolerate for the dubious good that any institution might claim. There is only one acceptable level of violence and abuse and that is zero.
That's quite a logical leap. Would you care to lay out the exact steps from somebody saying they find violence unacceptable, to asserting that they definitely support state sanctioned violence?
For the state to not tolerate any violence, it must prevent violence among its citizens and from foreign attackers. The only way we have that works is using violence to restrain criminals, or fight against enemy armies. We don't have any perfect safety shield that can protect everyone without harming the attackers, or to prevent people from doing violent acts without physically restraining them (violence).
You can test this, by looking at economic mobility rates for bottom quantile kids who differ along other dimensions. And it’s not just right wing people noticing that these days: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/01/new-harvard-study-w...
> Of all the factors most predictive of economic mobility in America, one factor clearly stands out in their study: family structure. By their reckoning, when it comes to mobility, “the strongest and most robust predictor is the fraction of children with single parents.” They find that children raised in communities with high percentages of single mothers are significantly less likely to experience absolute and relative mobility.
This likely one of the reasons why Asian kids raised in the bottom 1/5 have a 25% chance of ending up in the top 1/5 as adults, versus 11% for white kids. Asians have by far the lowest rates of single parent families, across the income spectrum.
> Poor people in the west tend to have less stable family structures, it has nothing to do with social norms and everything to do with money. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44127459
Saying it has “everything to do with money” is a pretty remarkable assertion given that the single parenthood gap between classes is growing even as everyone gets richer in absolute terms, and is extremely low in countries that are very poor in absolute terms.
I’m not saying we should turn a blind eye to anything. But we should be cautious about undermining institutions and hierarchies that may be doing more good than harm because we’re only fixated on the harm. And education and cognitive elites should be especially careful not to project their own experiences rest of society.