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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27854 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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In his latest link roundup, Scott links to (a pre-print?) of a paper claiming to show that "Black families who were enslaved until the Civil War continue to have considerably lower education, income, and wealth today than Black families who were free before the Civil War".

Here is Scott's commentary:

New study finds that black people whose ancestors were enslaved on the eve of the Civil War, compared to black people whose ancestors were free at the time, continue to have lower education/wealth/income even today. If true, this provides strong supports the ”cycle of poverty” story of racial inequality, and boosts the argument for reparations. But I’ve also seen studies say the opposite of this. I would be much more willing to accept the new study as an improvement on the old one if not for, well, things like the link above [1] - I have no evidence that anything like that was involved, but at this point it’s hard not to be paranoid. Does anyone know a good third-party commentary on this analysis?

[1] Here Scott talks about "the trend to bar scientists from accessing government datasets if their studies might get politically incorrect conclusions"

I'd be very interested in learning what you make of the study and how you think it links to Scott's conclusions. What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?

What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?

They'd have to address the other side of the equation - groups of immigrants that came with nothing to their name, but ended up doing ok, or even above average within a generation or two, or lottery winners who reverted back to their old socio-economic class within a generation or less.

In addition to what @RococoBasilica said, as well as the related fact that immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have cultural attributes associated with poverty (because poverty and being low-income are not quite the same thing) --compare Hmong poverty rates with Vietnamese-American poverty rates, for example -- historically immigrants have tended to settle in areas of the country in which poor people in general seem to have had higher level of social mobility. See, again, the Hmong. who tended to disproportionately settle in rural areas like Fresno.

related fact that immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have cultural attributes associated with poverty

immigrants might be low-income but might or might not have genetic traits predisposing them for poverty

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