The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects

Posted on | January 26, 2014 | 118 Comments

Complex causation in human behavior means that social science often isn’t very scientific. Not every variable can be measured with such accuracy as, for example, annual income and years of education, and things which are not measured tend to be neglected as factors in social science. Researchers don’t usually find correlations by accident, and they never find correlations except in measurable data, so that a certain level of inaccuracy and error is inevitable.

All of this is necessary preamble to an Atlantic Monthly article by Matthew O’Brien with this provocative headline:

Why Is the American Dream Dead in the South?

Uh, it’s not. The research O’Brien cites refers to the chance that someone whose parents are in the bottom 20% of the income distribution can rise to the top 20% of the distribution.

Stipulating that the data in the study is complete and accurate, and that everything in the analysis is legit — well, why is there a bright spot on the resulting map in the vicinity of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, but no corresponding bright spot near Athens, Georgia? Why does rural Arkansas look like a beacon of upward mobility, while the bustling economies of Atlanta and Charlotte produce no such effect?

Most of all, why does the map referenced by O’Brien show that impoverished Appalachia offers more opportunity for advancement than any of the more prosperous surrounding flatlands?

To use a social science term: Your data is obviously fucked up.

Look, O’Brien: I don’t want to start a fight, but if somebody tells you West Virginia is a glory land of economic opportunity, this is obviously somebody who never set foot in West Virginia. I don’t give a damn what they tell you after that, their credibility is shot.

With the strange mixture of credulous certainty and interventionist enthusiasm that behooves a writer for the Atlantic, however, O’Brien proceeds to draw conclusions from this research:

The researchers found that the larger the black population, the lower the upward mobility. But this isn’t actually a black-white issue. It’s a rich-poor one. Low-income whites who live in areas with more black people also have a harder time moving up the income ladder. In other words, it’s something about the places that black people live that hurts mobility.

Ri-iiiight.

Something like the poor being isolated — isolated from good jobs and good schools. See, the more black people a place has, the more divided it tends to be along racial and economic lines. The more divided it is, the more sprawl there is. And the more sprawl there is, the less higher-income people are willing to invest in things like public transit.
That leaves the poor in the ghetto, with no way out for their American Dreams. They’re stuck with bad schools, bad jobs, and bad commutes if they do manage to find better work. So it should be no surprise that the researchers found that racial segregation, income segregation, and sprawl are all strongly negatively correlated with upward mobility

So, if this is about “sprawl” that “leaves the poor in the ghetto,” why a vast expanse of low mobility in the rural South,  where there are no ghettos (because there are no major cities) and where there is no suburban “sprawl” (because there are no suburbs)?

Do you see what I mean about “credulous certainty”? If you begin with the assumption that the researchers have accurately measured something meaningful — West Virginia, land of opportunity! — and then start blabbering that “the researchers found” this, that and the other correlation, you’re likely to end up making all kinds of foolish arguments, as Matthew O’Brien eagerly does:

 The American Dream is alive in Denmark and Finland and Sweden. And in San Jose and Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh. But it’s dead in Atlanta and Raleigh and Charlotte. And in Indianapolis and Detroit and Jacksonville. Fixing that isn’t just about redistribution. It’s about building denser cities, so the poor aren’t so segregated. About good schools that you don’t have to live in the right (and expensive) neighborhood to attend. And about ending a destructive drug war that imprisons and blights the job prospects of far too many non-violent offenders — further shrinking the pool of “marriageable” men.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

You have no clue, O’Brien. “Building denser cities” in rural South Georgia? “Ending a destructive drug war” in Eutaw, Alabama? The American Dream “alive” in Pittsburgh but “dead” in Charlotte? You’re attempting to “solve” a problem you haven’t even begun to understand, and in the process making yourself a public nuisance.

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Mertz and other commenters who looked over the Harvard study and spotted obvious issues. Here is an excerpt that clearly points toward the basic problem:

We characterize intergenerational mobility using information from de-identi ed federal income tax records, which provide data on the incomes of more than 40 million children and their parents between 1996 and 2012. . . . In our baseline analysis, we focus on current U.S. citizens in the 1980-1982 birth cohorts { the oldest children in our data for whom we can reliably identify parents based on information on dependent claiming. We measure these children’s income as mean total family income in 2011 and 2012, when they are approximately 30 years old. We measure their parents’ income as mean family income between 1996 and 2000, when the children are between the ages of 15 and 20.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is insane. That is to say, what percentage of people reach the top 20% in income by age 30? Most people’s incomes peak in their 40s and 50s. Many 30-year-olds are just a few years out of college. Mertz promises a more complete analysis Monday at his blog, and we’ll wait to see what he finds. But my basic common-sense hunch — the alleged superior mobility of West Virginians — tells me something is wrong here.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

Comments

118 Responses to “Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects”

  1. bridget
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:06 am

    My basic common-sense hunch tells me that people can get along better on $80k/year in the rural South than on $200k/year in Manhattan. Of course there is less “income mobility” in the South: people don’t need to have as much money there.

    Try measuring improvements in standard of living.

  2. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:10 am

    Years and probably generations.

  3. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:22 am

    I’ve noted that myself. However, the methodology is still REALLY bad.

  4. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:23 am

    Which is one of the major problems with the study, it assumes the US population as a whole is relatively static, when in fact the ones with the highest absolute economic mobility are also the ones with the highest physical mobility and least geographically static populations.

  5. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:24 am

    Nebraska and Kansas populations are heading into the major cities.

  6. George B
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:25 am

    People who move from the bottom of the income distribution to the top are unusually driven to achieve financial success. A better measure would be people who move from the bottom to the middle. Lots of people make the rational choice that they want a work/life balance where they have enough money to meet their needs, but they also have enough time for friends and family.

    Unrealized capital gains from successful property acquisitions or growth of a business will not likely show up in the tax returns of a 30 year old. Part of being successful is reinvesting in a business instead of taking out lots of income early on.

  7. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:30 am

    According to the table on page 66, its roughly 58%. That is moving from Q1 to Q2 (28%), moving from Q1 to Q3 (18%) and Q1 to Q4 (12%).

  8. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:36 am

    Yep. Same stupid trick they use when claiming “the rich” get richer while “the poor” get poorer.

    Neither strata is a gulag or caste. Some people come out of nowhere to get rich, like many on the Billionaire list. Some rich end up on the bottom. And in this country, nobody stays poor just because they were born poor.

  9. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:38 am

    The worst part is, they actually ADMIT this problem with their methodology on page 21, paragraph 2 of the methodology explanation.

  10. Davy Jones
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:39 am

    Not to pile on West Virginia, but the Harvard study also suggests that the best places which have the most upward mobility are the middle of a wheat field in North Dakota or the desert of northern Nevada (which is probably federal land anyway).

    Anyhoo, all the suckers keep leaving the northeast to live in the south and southwest.

  11. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:40 am

    Or, in the modern post-Randian world, as “Going Galt”.

  12. Eric D. Mertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:41 am

    He’s accusing you of deliberately misunderstanding the comment so as to attack the strawman you wish had been made instead.

  13. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 1:41 am

    #BlessYourHeart

  14. Lee Reynolds
    January 27th, 2014 @ 2:06 am

    This is clearly an attempt to rationalize the left’s desire for things like “public transportation” and “redistribution.”

    Why do human societies have to be continually afflicted by these fools?

    Poverty is created by the poor. It is the product of human beings who fail to take advantage of their opportunities, or to even understand what those opportunities are in most cases. It cannot be reduced, alleviated or eliminated because you can’t fix broken people.

    My parents we’re well under the 20th percentile, especially my father who has not worked a steady job in at least 20 years.

    I, on the other hand am actually just above the 80th percentile, and expect to do even better.

    So when I say that poverty is the creation of the poor, I know of what I speak.

  15. Colin77
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:07 am

    If New York is the land of opportunity and the South the opposite, why are so many black New Yorkers moving south? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/nyregion/many-black-new-yorkers-are-moving-to-the-south.html?pagewanted=all

  16. Sean Starke
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:39 am

    ” And the more sprawl there is, the less higher-income people are willing to invest in things like public transit.

    That leaves the poor in the ghetto, with no way out for their American Dreams.”

    As has been convincingly shown in places with public transit, like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Washington DC, etc., poverty and ghettos are completely eradicated.

  17. robertstacymccain
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:48 am

    Atlanta has the MARTA system — and also some of the worst traffic nightmares imaginable.

  18. robertstacymccain
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:56 am

    The income variability within one’s own lifetime can be extreme, and measuring a 30-year-old’s income in 2011-2012 — i.e., amid a horrible recession — is probably not a fair measure of their ultimate financial position.

    On the other hand, hard economic times in your youth can permanently affect your fortunes. It was my misfortune to graduate high school during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

  19. Neo
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:00 am

    The researchers found that the larger the black population, the lower the upward mobility.

    If Charles Murray had written this, it would have been racist.

  20. Sean Starke
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:02 am

    The most aptly-named of course being the South East Philadelphia Transit…the SEPTA, aka ‘septic’

  21. Neo
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:03 am

    They are still working on gentrifying all of DC, while most of Manhattan is now free of poverty, ghettos, and poor folks, except the homeless.

  22. rightisright5116
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:17 am

    Try not measuring at all. No matter what the data says, the answer will be more invasive government policies and wealth redistribution through taxation preceded by months/ years of false political rhetoric.

  23. werewife
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:26 am

    Since it’s usually a popular subtopic, I’ll bring it up: Notice it’s also “About good schools that you don’t have to live in the right (and expensive) neighborhood to attend.” Yes. And that’s why they invented the public library. In this miraculous modern age, learning is FREE… but you have to work for it. Anyone with motivation and basic literacy can absorb knowledge to the limit of natural capability – but not by sitting passively waiting for a paid functionary to stuff it into your head. With motivation and effort, learning is possible even if you/your children go to a bad school. I see it happening every day (my city has a bad-to-mediocre school system, but good public libraries). The catch: If you have the bad fortune to be born behind, you must work harder to get ahead. The alternative to this is not a unicorntopia where everyone is given exactly the same resources and results by the benevolent gods of the state, but the iron status hierarchies that are the condition of most human societies. I know what kind of society Mr. O’Brien would REALLY like to rule – I mean, participate in…

  24. werewife
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:31 am

    This. Unfortunately.

  25. bflat879
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:55 am

    It looks like they found a matching statistic for a perceived problem.

  26. JeffWeimer
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:02 am

    You’re confusing what the data says. It’s a graph of extreme income mobility – bottom 20% to top 20%. You’re arguing that it’s representative of ANY mobility – any quintile to any higher one. That’s not the case.

    Just because there seems to be lower mobility to the highest bracket doesn’t mean there isn’t ANY.

    It could mean that there is a larger, more robust middle class in those redder areas than elsewhere – of course there’s more extreme mobility in NYC when it’s all haves and have-nots. If you have a job there, you have a much greater chance to be in the top 20%. NYC may very well have a larger income spread inside the top quintile than Atlanta has throughout all 5 quintiles – NYC is home to all those bankers and hedge-fund managers after all.

    Remember, this is all graded on a curve – at no time will more than 20% of the population be in any quintile.

  27. Unix-Jedi
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:03 am

    RAAAAACIST!!!!!

  28. JFrary
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:04 am

    Most of the upwardly mobile people I know in Farmington, Maine went out of state and up. I moved to NJ to become upwardly mobile, recognizing that operating a wood-turning lathe offered lateral movement.at best. When I retired I returned to become downwardly mobile.

  29. Unix-Jedi
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:07 am

    C’mon, RSM.

    *Obviously* what Valdosta needs is a monorail, and some large, planned, towers…

    Monorail!

    http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/The_Monorail_Song

  30. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:15 am

    Aside from the fact he gets worldwide median income wrong, which is easy to Google, my comment directly addressed his point (“If you are poor here, you are still one of the wealthiest people on this entire damn planet.”). But sure, I was addressing a straw man if thats the straw man you need to ignore my own point.

  31. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:17 am

    Nobody has ever ‘Gone Galt’, a silly idea that goes no further than being a Randian wet dream.

  32. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:20 am

    Can you point to a society outside of Africa where this has been true? Can you tell me how the financiers that form our upper class and who push paper and use Credit Default Swaps to get rich are “creating” anything?

  33. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:24 am

    Sure, for your purposes to push policies that benefit only a few, it’s better to compare us to Uganda than Norway or Germany.

  34. RS
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:29 am

    Excellent observation. The methodology is truly “zero sum.” The real difference between bottom and top could be quite small, but if one person moves up, another will be moving down. The data says nothing about how people are actually doing.

  35. Latest Harvard Study Example of Garbage In, Garbage Out | kcericdmertz
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:32 am

    […] site and found a rather poorly conducted study (warning, link is to a PDF document) he had written a post about.  I am planning to fisk both the study and the Atlantic article which first brought it his – […]

  36. FrancisChalk
    January 27th, 2014 @ 8:45 am

    Absolutely correct, but I would add, “Only the tactics are different . . . for now.”.

  37. bill reeves
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:02 am

    I’m assuming what they’re measuring at thirty isthe mobility vs. Other 30 yea olds the guys who did the study aren’t flakes. And everyone ignores one of the greatest obstacles to mobility: the elite university . The other issue is that you cannot compare a continental scale megastate to Denmark. In general what inequality stats are measuring is the degree of ethnic, racial, geographic, and economic diversity. Tiny Denmark has none so mobility and equality will be higher. The US also has a wildly disproportionate share of winner take all market winners. There are huge problems with this type of analysis that no one is addressing. Because the story is too good to check.

  38. Hathead
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:41 am

    Interesting. Loving County figured in another bit of liberal flim-flam in the ’80s. It was, according to one study, the most dangerous place in the country to drive on the highways, as measured by highway deaths per capita. This “proved” that it was necessary to keep the 55-mph speed limit on rural highways, even though everyone was screaming to lift this bit of Carter-era idiocy, at least on rural interstates. I checked on the study (I was a journalist at the time) and discovered that Loving County had a major state highway running through it, and had had exactly one fatal accident in the previous four years. But since it had a population of about 100, Bingo! Deadliest road in the country! Need to keep the speeds down!

  39. Edward Royce
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:46 am

    LOL. That phrase “Bless you heart” was explained to me years ago when I lived down South.

    Note: it’s not really a blessing. 🙂

    Hahaha. I am reminded of when I earned that saying from one of my fellow software developers. I made a real goofball error with some variables in a component I was working on and it caused havoc throughout the entire app. My fellow developer turned to me and said “Bless your heart for trying so hard….”. 🙂

  40. Edward Royce
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:52 am

    I’ve essentially gone Galt. I’m an experienced software developer with 30+ years of professional experience including many web technologies right from when the web first got started. By any standard of measure my background, experience, knowledge and skills can get me any kind of work I want pretty much anywhere in the world.

    I looked at what America is becoming and really just said “F*** it” and retired. Now I spend my time playing computer games, wasting my time on blogs and working on open source projects. Am I contributing to the tax base? Not if I can help it.

  41. Socialism: Organized Evil
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:56 am

    It’s evil. Absolute, pure evil.

  42. Edward Royce
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:56 am

    *shrug* capital (money) is like water. You don’t just need it. You need it in the right places, at the right times and in the right quantities for it to be effective.

    And amusingly enough someone actually took that analogy and created an analog computer using water to model economics. It’s known MONIAC.

  43. JeffWeimer
    January 27th, 2014 @ 10:03 am

    Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Cuba, the former Soviet republics, Indonesia, the Middle East. Need I go on?

  44. FredBeloit
    January 27th, 2014 @ 10:09 am

    Just another case of playing the geography card because the race card is no longer honored.
    By the way, I live in Northwest Florida, shown in basic black on the map. It is odd how no effects of this disaster in our area are visible.

  45. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 10:09 am

    You contribute to the tax base by buying things, but if you’re at retirement age good for you for taking it! It’s too bad you are missing out on a massive tech boom; although there’s no shortage of people ready to take your place. As someone who has contributed a massive amount of work to the Creative Commons, I think it’s admirable you are contributing to open source.

  46. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 11:11 am

    I can’t find a video of it, but Henry Cho used to do a hilarious takeoff on “Bless his heart”

  47. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 11:14 am

    No you weren’t “addressing it.” You rephrased it by implication into some words of your own creation. Then proceeded to attack the words you made up.

    What, you think nobody is going to read the thread?

  48. ihazconservative
    January 27th, 2014 @ 11:16 am

    You saying it doesn’t make it so. Sorry.

  49. dwpittelli
    January 27th, 2014 @ 12:18 pm

    1) “Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or … is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.” — in every Communist country.

    2) If you can get rich trading, then unless you are engaged in fraud or are exploiting the stupidity of government, you are helping grow the economy. People trading securities can make a market more efficient; they cannot fix a massive underlying problem with the securities’ backing. For example, if the government hadn’t forced banks to lend to people with bad credit, and the fed hadn’t kept money artificially cheap, we would not have had a real estate bubble and crash.

  50. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 12:23 pm

    So you do think no one will read the thread. Interesting.

    It’s always amazing to watch the left attempt to think.