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!
RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Carts and Horses, Causes and Effects http://t.co/RczY7fYsxZ #TCOT
This fellow doesn’t give a damn about the stats he’s using because they are merely tools he’s using to give his already decided opinions some an air of legitimacy.
Keep asking them there questions, Breeze.
That is exactly right. He is trying to twist the data to make a point.
The data is fucked up because the originator of the data is…
Beyond being a waste of money, studies like this sow confusion and can by contributing to a cluster fuck cause way more harm than the dollars pumped into such a study might suggest.
Not that you didn’t know this already, but Mr. O’Brien is a die-hard marxist.
As with any Lysenko-ist comrade, his primary job entails conjuring up a politically-motivated narrative and then cherry picking data to support said narrative.
I’ve noticed, for example, that he copies Cass Sunstein’s essay structure and style very closely.
Agreed. It was similar false data which resulted in the passing of the Community Reinvestment Act and the eventual collapse of the economy in 2008. Just imagine how many bad ideas this will give people…
The ideology of liberalism little more than an ever-shifting mirage of illusions conjured up to exploit the sympathies of the gullible and the ignorant.
Notice the use of the statistical measure “quintile,” which of course is one fifth of the population. That tells us nothing about the difference in real numbers between the lowest and the highest. This is especially pertinent in rural counties. As you point out, so much is missing that the conclusions drawn are meaningless. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Dems won’t use this “data” as proof of horrific income inequality or some other nonsense.
Notice how the areas with the highest odds are very much like the areas with insufficient data. I submit that the criteria for “sufficient data” was entirely too loose.
Also, notice that it’s the odds of moving from the lowest 20% to the highest 20%. I ask — who cares? What are the odds of moving out of the lowest 20% into any other quintile?
Yes — the income range in West Virginia is likely narrower than in Cincinnati.
I notice O’Brien ignores those counties which coincide precisely with Indian Reservations, bastions of socialism that they are. If he gets his way, the entire country will be dark red.
Also, look to far West Texas on the southern border of New Mexico. There you see two counties where it is presumably easy to go from bottom to top. One of them is Loving County. Do click the link and enjoy.
This is all about the push to drive the population off the lack and into massive urban concentrations whete they can be more easily managed through control by state money, state housing, state money and ultimately state force. It is the prog dream that has destroyed neighborhoods in UK through celblock Council housing and piled up concrete workers’ ghettos throughout Europe.
The Dems have decided to use the income inequality as a central campaign meme for 2014, and all propaganda outlets are in full swing. Facts don’t make for good propaganda since the Dems go with Satan’s-Argument-to-get-Votes: it’s not fairrrrr!
Quite so. Lending regulations are in the offing to mandate that mortgage lenders take neighborhood racial diversity into account in processing home loans. Consider all the ramifications of that.
I found the problem with the data. Page 21, Paragraph 1 of the study itself states that a child is permanently assigned to the place where their parents first filed a tax return while the child was alive and in their custody. So, even if a child lived there for only a month before moving out, and spent their entire lives in a middle-class neighborhood before moving out to an upper-class neighborhood after college, that child is permanently assigned – for the sake of the study – to that location.
Considering those rural areas are draining into the urban areas, that would explain why it is so easy to improve one’s relative standing in those areas, those are the kids who moved out when they were young.
Here’s the link: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf
I’ll have a more detailed fisking of it over at kcericdmertz.wordpress.com tomorrow.
I think these authors need to re-examine the data. Permanently assigning a child to the first place their parents filed tax returns claiming them as dependents and not taking into account the relatively high level of geographic mobility as farming communities empty into the cities screws with the data.
Their methodology was so bad I would officially refer to it as “not even wrong”.
I look forward to your post tomorrow.
To make sure I understand, moving “up” is credited to the county in which one lived on one’s first April 15, no matter when the “uptick” occurs? If that’s the case, the data would be worthless it seems.
Yep. To quote: “We permanently assign each child to a single CZ based on the ZIP code from which his or her parent led their tax return in the 1rst year the child was claimed as a dependent. We interpret this CZ as the area where a child grew up.”
A CZ is defined as a “Commuting Zone” of roughly four or so counties surrounding a major city based on data from the 1990 Census.
As usual, SRM is completely right but I do agree with Obrien’s comments about the impact of stupid drug laws and the havoc wreaked on non-violent offenders.
Exactly so. It’s all part of the UN mandated Agenda 21, part of the “New World Order.”
How horrible it is to be poor in a country like America, where nearly 30 million of us live in a household that makes $34,000 per person…making you the One Percent globally.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1–You-need-34k-income-global-elite–half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html
The median income worldwide is about $1200. And yet we must raise taxes to pay for people to spend a lifetime on the government dole at the cost of tens of thousands per year.
There. Are. No. Poor. People. In. America. If you are poor here, you are still one of the wealthiest people on this entire damn planet.
And I’m sick of paying for you.
Really Robert, this has you apoplectic? It’s a surprise to you that in the south those born into an income bracket are unlikely to break from it given the red state policies the south loves? This as the entire point behind
Frank’s ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas.’ Ultimately, a poor young person in New York raised in poverty has a much greater chance to move beyond those circumstances and enter a new tax bracket than a person under similar circumstances in Atlanta. It’s not measuring Economic Activity, but how widespread are the benefits of that prosperity. And the south fails. The stats back that up. Sorry, but this is what y’all deserve for supporting policies that go against your interests. In the south, the rich are most likely to get richer, and the poor are most likely to stay poor. Welcome to your Confederacy.
It’s truly amazing to see how quickly the TV media has picked up on Hussein Obama’s impulsive desire to stoke envy, resentment, and class warfare through marxist verbiage like “income inequality”.
As though an individual’s work-ethic inequality, IQ inequality, self-discipline inequality, and verbal-skills inequality are somehow irrelevant.
In all it’s essentials, the ideology that is today’s liberalism is exactly the same marxist precursor.
Go and check out Page 21, Paragraph 1 of the actual study. There are definite problems with their methodology.
You clearly didn’t read all the comments. The data referred to in this study is flawed, at least in terms of supporting the author’s conclusions and yours, as well. Further, the question is not whether one rises from bottom to top; it’s whether one can better his/her circumstances, at all. That’s not the question posed by the study and the study does not give the answer you attribute to it.
Wrong comment
What a great way to measure us. when you get to a point to where you only can look to the worst of the world to feel good about your own country’s situation, you should realize you’re in loser territory. It’s like my alcoholic friends pointing at Charlie a Sheen and saying, ‘At least I’m not THAT bad!’ Like, congratulations I guess?
No one was interested in my book proposal for “What’s the Matter With Thomas Frank?”
Too bad …
Just guessing but maybe because it’s points didn’t actually resonate with anyone’s experience.
West Virginia is highly mobile.
Mobile homes, mobile phones, mobile identities, mobile meth cookers, you name it.
In fact, the typical high school graduate in West Virginia chooses the career move known as getmethefuckouttahere. Very mobile, indeed.
According to the data on page 66, no more than 1 in 3 of the people born into a specific quintile will remain at that same quintile upon reaching adulthood.
You invert the premise to create an upside-down conclusion. Why not argue the words written, and not your substitute language?
That really made no sense if it was a response to what I wrote. Sorry.
This article has a hidden agenda. One long term goal of the left is to get everyone into cities where they are more “manageable” and thereby protect Gaia. (Ever try to subdivide rural land?) Propaganda and fake data are the tools of the “activists” trade.
The other thing he didn’t address is MOVING. The other thing he didn’t address is that all of this stuff is changing constantly. I was born in Pittsburgh in 1957. In 1987 Pittsburgh was at the tail end of an economic collapse that began in the Carter administration. Read The Wolf Finally Came for the sad story. In 1987 I was in Ft. Benning Ga,, in the Army. All those Terrible Towels you see in every town in the NFL during Steelers games? They were people who left the city (and their kids) during the collapse. About the time I turned 50, I was back in Pittsburgh and briefly broke into the upper quintile because I was a contractor using the skills I learned in the Army. Then when that contract was over I was in another quintile. And so on.
In other words, he’s like Ezra Klein except you can’t hear the smarmy arrogant tone.
Quite frankly, I don’t care what they spew on about the results of their ridiculous studies, as long as it convinces liberals to stay in NY, CA and stay away from TX.
Exactly. Mobility isn’t usually a quick trip from top to bottom or vice versa, it takes years and makes stops in every “quintile” along the way.
But O’Brien isn’t interested in what the numbers actually mean, he wants to use them to sell a scam.
He’s (O’Brien) just preparing the battle space for what’s coming from the Dems:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312807/burn-down-suburbs-stanley-kurtz
That’s not what the data says, it is only what you and O’Brien want it to say.
Contrary to doubting the data, another piece I read on this research touts the fact that places with intact two-parent families do the best at giving their offspring opportunities for achieved income mobility. And definitely not places with highest rates of (fashionably Leftist) single parent families. This damage begins with blacks but equally affects white mobility, demonstrating how destructive non-traditional households – the Left’s ideal – are to having sustainable communities.
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as ‘bad luck.’”
— Robert Heinlein.
Die hard Marxists are usually real experts on the American dream…or maybe they aren’t
You bring up Kansas? To what point? Kansas, according to the map, is doing even better than New York.
How do you explain Nebraska? North Dakota? (Well… North Dakota is fracking… but Nebraska?)
Looking at our Global 1%ism makes every single bit as much sense as the whining about 1% here. “You ARE the 1%” is a true statement.
We only look at “relative” wealth because looking at absolute wealth wouldn’t have the same usefulness in a class war. We only look at the US because looking at the World is equally unuseful to the class warrior.
short answer: socio-economic reductionism, the belief that anything and everything can be reduced to socio-economic factors.
The sense is there. Try learning enough to understand it,.
The social science equivalent of looking for your lost keys under a lamp post because that is where the light is better.
We’re going to stop volunteering the data these people play with. Counting people is one thing providing racial information to racists is stupidly self-damaging and never does truly help. They say right on the census that money is involved and that encourages racism and it is divisive and ethically and morally wrong all around. We see the mischief it invites for the psychologically disturbed, those rattled with control impulses.