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Poverty Stunts IQ In the US But Not In Other Developed Countries (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: New research published in the journal Psychological Science (abstract) found that children who grow up in poverty within the United States tend to have lower IQs than peers from other socioeconomic brackets. Previous studies have shown a complex relationship between a child's genetics, his environment, and his IQ. Your genes can't pinpoint your IQ, but they can indicate a rough range of values within which your IQ is quite likely to fall. For kids in poverty, they seem to consistently end up on the low end of that window. Interestingly, this effect was not seen for any of the other countries hosting kids within the study, which included Australia, Germany, England, Sweden, and the Netherlands. The study authors speculate that "inequalities in educational and medical access in the U.S." may be the root of the differences, though another researcher is planning to study the effect of school environments as well.
blah blah unions blah blah leftism blah blah
And this stupid attitude is the problem. The US is the most right wing Western country, and that is the reason why there is such inequality of opportunity - the unions, if anything, are too weak, not too strong.
The study accounted for genes. Genes predict the window, but only in USA, socioeconomic factors predict where in the window you're likely to be.
The experience of many, many other countries shows conclusively and overwhelmingly that society is better off with a good social system that supports the poor and underprivileged. It constantly amazes that Americans are SO insistent on their "every man for himself" mentality, in the face of the evidence. The countries ranked the best to live in are socialist societies, where the rich are compelled to help the poor rather than say "fuck it dude I got mine, so screw you". They have government run medical systems, and high taxes to support a well functioning society.
America has one of the biggest wealth disparities in the world, a poor education system, a health care system that is massively expensive but comes up far short of the best ones in results, has more murder, and a crumbling infrastructure. When will you all wake up and realize that your culture needs to be changed? It's OK. You can join the modern world. The rest of us will be happy to see you do well! We don't wish bad things for you. But you have to give up the cowboy attitude, in order to get there.
Could this be because the school systems in these other countries are funded in a way where the budget is less dependent on local taxes. If the money is region/nationalized you don't end up with the more prosperous cities having nicer schools because they have higher income from local property taxes.
Also -- college is cheaper/free in many European countries. Less of a financial barrier-to-entry for higher education means more poverty-sicken students get to go to school.
Please, read the article. Each individual's IQ is mostly determined by genes, true. But there is little genetic difference between IQ of various populations. So each population will have individuals with high IQ and low IQ.
The problem is that the US system reinforces poverty - schools are funded from local sources and poor districts provide poor education. Add to this a high rate of de-facto segregation.
Or maybe Americans watch five hours of tv per day vs 2 hours for Sweden. The three hours difference is way more than I ever spent on homework.
Most teachers in the other countries are union members too. Thus this can't be the problem. It's the scapegoat.
who are just attributing this to the ethnic makeup of the US, you're missing the point. The study isn't saying that poor American blacks are not as smart as affluent American whites. It's saying that poor American blacks are less intelligent than affluent American blacks, and poor American whites are less intelligent than affluent American whites, and the same poor vs. affluent gap doesn't exist in other countries.
Here in the USA lead abatement in rentals is a thin coat of paint. Elsewhere they require the landlord to remove it ALL from the home.
And who lives in the shitty run down really old homes with lead paint in them? poor people.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We see the same "sorting" effect in Canada, where being the child of well-to-do parents is absolutely wonderful, and leads to success in business and industry, roughly commensurate with the sum of (intelligence && opportunity). Starting out the child of poor parents gets you no respect, and people assume you're stupid.
The smartest three people in my high schools were a poor kid with parents from the Ukraine, me, with mostly white middle-class parents and the son of a successful businessman. In business success over the years, the businessman's kid came first, then me, then the poor kid. We all did better than the merely not-dumb folks, and really really well by comparison to the dumb kids, with one exception...
Some immensely likeable dumb kids went into sales and did better than any of us (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
a good 1/2 of my friends are teachers
every single one of them complains about how they are stopped from doing the right thing because of the unions
bad teachers cant be fired, and good teachers are pushed to the "good schools"
Well, if the data said we're stupid then that'd mean we're stupid -- even if we wouldn't like to accept that. But that's not the data is saying.
What the data says is that growing up poor in the US limits your intellectual development in a way it doesn't other countries. Since this is based on siblings-raised-apart data this excludes the explanation that poor people in America are poor because they're inherently stupider than people who are wealthier. Since this discrepancy between siblings raised apart doesn't happen in similarly advanced countries, it is not something that is inherent in poverty, either.
Provided that the data stand up to scrutiny, this indicates that America squanders at least some of its intellectual potential.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I live in London, England and my daughter is the only white English girl in her class at an outstanding school. There are lots and lots of people of African descent living in England, they are as bright as the rest of us, if not brighter. The parent post is just racist twaddle.
There isn't much genuine "poverty" in the US anymore. Hasn't been for a couple generations.
Go watch hood fight videos on WSHH or Darien Long patrolling an Atlanta mall on Youtube. We certainly have ghettos. But the people in them are not suffering grinding "poverty." They're all fat, equipped with cell phones and cars and spend their disposable income on status symbols and various vices. The kids they make are fed good meals in public schools and junk food at home till they're fat. Aside from the pencil whipping "education" they get in government funded schools they're raised by Nintendo and TV.
This is gross neglect, not "poverty." And more benefits and deficits aren't going to make good parents out of the denizens of our proto-idiocracy.
No, I don't have a solution either. At least none that doesn't involve pretty serious compromises of civil rights. And we all know the subjects of such attention would rather the stunted IQs than suffer any impositions.
No, that is bullshit. Unions exist for the purpose of their constituents, not the schools. Schools without unions (private schools, whose teachers also get paid less) have students who do better than average.
Ever notice how politician's kids go to private schools?
It couldn't possibly be because they've systematically done everything they could to destroy the public schools could it?
Nah.
If you a member of a union in Germany, of course you have to pay a due. And of course the unions are closely associated with a party. Moreso, each party has their own union, and the leading union members are also high ranking party officials. For instance, in Germany, there is one teacher's union, the GEW, which is associated with the Social Democrats, and another one, the Philologenverband, which has close connections to the right leaning CDU (the party of Chancellor Merkel).
Twelve of the thirteen states with the greatest poverty are solid red states where the teachers unions have been curbed or eliminated. These are also twelve of the thirteen states with the worst schools.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"The enormous benefits given to the very wealthy, the privileges for the very wealthy here, are way beyond those of other comparable societies and are part of the ongoing class war. Take a look at CEO salaries. CEOs are no more productive or brilliant here than they are in Europe, but the pay, bonuses, and enormous power they get here are out of sight. They’re probably a drain on the economy, and they become even more powerful when they are able to gain control of policy decisions." -- Noam Chomsky
In the USA it is considered completely normal for the big end of town to finance and control policy decisions, either through legitimate channels, or with "hooker and blow" deals. The moment another grassroots group, like a Union, has coordination or funding to present a defensible point of view, it is considered a travesty.
All these other countries in the study also have healthcare, public transport, and so forth. The USA is the lone wolf. I live in a third world country and the similarities to the USA are striking. Here we have powerful elite can do what they want, there's a tiny middle class and most people get shit on. Of course a missing middle class means a missing consumer base, so the business interests of the elite are mostly export oriented, just like the USA with its IT services. And IT products/services is arguably the only thing currently keeping the USA afloat.
My wife, who is usually pretty open-minded, having grown up in a house without basic amenities like running water, was shocked when we visited San Francisco. There was one particular street made entirely of shit - people just shitting all over the road everywhere. Not at all what was expected, after having visited some other first world nations, previously. The expectation was the the USA would be like these, and yet given its wealth and image, even better. Nope. Streets made of human shit.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Unions do good and bad things. The question is do you throw it all out because of the bad things, then let the teachers work for near poverty wages? Which is not hyperbole, the school boards are always trying to cut back anywhere they can.
I grew up with teachers. My family was pretty conservative and anti-union. But when it came time for contract negotations my anti-union father was out there on the picket lines when they were being shafted by the board. And that's because the unions are the only thing we have in any form that protects rights of workers and that can balance the power of the employers. For every bad thing a union has done there are even more bad things the employers and governments do.
Private schools and teachers get paid more than public? WTF are you talking about?
My wife, who is usually pretty open-minded, having grown up in a house without basic amenities like running water, was shocked when we visited San Francisco. There was one particular street made entirely of shit - people just shitting all over the road everywhere. Not at all what was expected, after having visited some other first world nations, previously. The expectation was the the USA would be like these, and yet given its wealth and image, even better. Nope. Streets made of human shit.
Lucky you! You got there just in time for the annual Shit Festival.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Good thing there aren't any teachers' unions in Europe. Oh, wait...
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
False. My wife is a teacher. She interviewed at several private schools. The pay is awful, and the facilities are often not as nice as public schools. Don't confuse expensive school with high teacher pay. Parental involvement is what matters most.
The TV is just always on while they're home and doing other things.
I was listening to NPR, and the interviewee mentioned that her research showed that for 40% of American children, the TV was on, and visible, during all three meals.
So, yes, Americans watch a lot of TV, but is there any evidence that watching TV lowers IQ? I would suspect that the causation is the other way around.
Family emphasis on scholastics outweigh anything else.
Several studies, described in Freakonomics and elsewhere, found that this is not true. Parental attitudes make surprisingly little difference. Who the parents are, makes far more difference that what the parents do. Family income, and the IQ of the biological parents (but not adoptive parents) makes much more difference than reading to your kids, helping them with homework, etc.
was that United States poverty actually means extreme poverty where money, education, healthcare, nuturement, homes, cars, transporation, day care, special needs services and all that is completely denied.
and the comparison countries "Germany, UK, Australia,.." are all actually really rich countries with more of a socialism style to their economic systems. In those countries they have completely free healthcare, free college educations, better school systems (although I have no studied each country, I have looked at countries such as Germany which has completely free college education even for people who go there from out of the country, and Finland has a revolutionary system with three teachers per class and 20 student caps, France puts more money into kids and "fixing" life problems, etc).
I grew up in Oregon and as such I was denied all school after the 6th grade, and I had no health insurance and therefore could not see a dentist, psychologist, PCP, or any other type of doctor growing up. Until the year 2011 when Affordable Health Care Act kicked in, there were hundreds of thousands of uninsured children in Oregon .. meaning when they had a health problem, they were denied medical care most of the time.
Oregon just so happens to also have the worst graduation rates .. 70% of disabled kids drop out of school because the services push them out and don't have services for them, and 40% of regular kids drop out.
Compare that to Finland with 95% graduation rate!
In America they also prefer to "drug" kids with medications for mental disorders they don't have, rather than to fix the underlining cause of their problems, which is often times rooted in their homes, poverty, and lack of services and infrastructure for them to succeed in.
Those medications cause IQ drops, autism, brain damage, and prevent learning and fail to actually correct kids/adults problems.
In most of those European countries they also have social housing programs (for example, housing is free in Germany and you also get free basic income, health care, plus education as mentioned before). In America, if you can't afford the sky high rent, you're probably going to be homeless and completely desolate, stressed out wondering the streets or if you're lucky in a bed bug infested ghetto homeless shelter with crap food and dirty insides (they serve people expired food at most of these places).
So the author missed one thing. It does appear the problem is linked to poverty. Because America and those other countries have vastly different systems. Poverty means way different things in America compared to European countries. In America they expect you to "pay for everything out of pocket" but if you cannot do that, you do not get free service drop ins. The rich therefore are the only ones who can afford to properly raise their children in America because they have the money for private schools, private services, tutors, private doctors, private lawyers, leisure, exploration, etc; everyone else suffers and rots. But in Europe, basic services and living needs are free to the poor.
The only way to fix this is to adopt a new United States constitution perhaps based on the one from South Africa, as some US Supreme Court justices indicated was a model replacement for our own. Other countries are already built with better constitutions, as after World War II President Roosevelt sent aids to European/foreign countries and helped build in economic rights into their new constitutions. The United States was to get a new Bill of Rights 2 with economic rights, but when Roosevelt died prematurely, his work was successfully subverted in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem with the United States is purely it's shitty geared for the wealthy and rich constitution.
We don't even have the right to live in dignity, as other nations have. We have no right to basic income. No right to medica
Schools without unions are private, meaning they get lots more money than public schools
Charter schools are seldom unionized. They are publicly funded, and often receive less per student than public schools. They also are not allowed to select their students, and must take anyone who applies, ether on a first-applied-first-admitted basis, or by lottery.
Private school teachers are paid more than public school teachers
Nonsense. Most private school teachers are paid significantly less than public school teachers.
it is not something that is inherent in poverty, either.
No that is the exact opposite conclusion actually. It has EVERYTHING to do with REAL poverty.
The problem with comparing the US to other advanced countries is that with the social services and money that is spent on them in those countries, even when you are born into a poor family in Sweden lets say, you are immediately and profoundly more wealthy than your American counterpart. This wealth isn't judged in dollars, cents and purchasing power however in excellent public transportation, strong workers rights, disability programs, top notch education for all, excellent first world healthcare, retirement benefits and more.
Societal wealth makes all the difference here. A better comparison to America would be a country like Saudi Arabia. You have a handful of disgustingly wealthy people who control almost all of the actionable power and wealth in society, a single digit percentage of REAL middle class (and I mean the real definition of middle class not this bogus American definition that was created for political expediency). If you are REALLY middle class then you are afforded modern conveniences and a level of financial, retirement, educational and healthcare security to where you don't have to frequently worry too hard about being poor in the near or long term future.
Also just like Saudi Arabia, the rest of the society is so broke they're broken, so poor they can't even pay attention.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The US is the first empire to go from rise to decline without an intervening period of civilisation.
From your own link, Mr. Deepshit:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
and how do you blame someone for making a better life for themselves or their kids? thats low
It's not the fault of the individual parents who make rational choices. It's the fault of our elected leaders for setting up an environment where such choices become rational.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I'm not sure European unions operate the same way American ones do. For one thing much of Europe doesn't have a political system where influence is correlated to forking over cash to politicians. Not nearly to the same extent anyway. Meaning they get to spend contributions toward collective bargaining.
Having said that, I guess some of the above posts are just reflexive "unions baad" bleats.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
In Belgium there are three large unions. I can join any union I desire anf they represend roughly the political ideas of some large parties.
You need to pay a due (and some companies even pay back that dues). Hoevere ther is never an obligation to join a union. If there are more than 50 employees, a union representative is enforced by law, so basically all comapnies are unionized.
You can be part of a union or not and nobody cares. I have no idea who is in a union and who is not. Management does not care either as all people are treated equally (some exceptions of the union reps).
Sometimes they go on strike and I hate that. But in general they are the people that can stand up to companies and say no, where you would be out of luck.
And companies use this as well. At one company that was in a reorginisation, they included the unions and when I asked the CEO if he was not pissed off that it now too longer, his answer was:
It might have taken longer, but we anticipated that, so there is no real delay. Also now the unions are ok with it, we can go on as expected and the changes they brought up were well founded and implemented most of the time.
You see, there can be a gain if you look at your staff as psrtners and not as a cost.
Thanks to the unions I get payed extra if I do overtime and my boss tries to avoid it. Instead he rather hires more people. So instead of two people working 60 hours, 3 work 40 hours. I get 35 days holiday + sick days when I am sick. I get presents and bonusses and the company does well and is making money.
On the downside, the CEO has only two cars and no helicopters. So there's that, but he is not unhappy and still can take his holidays anywhere he likes, because he ALSO has 35 holdiays.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.