Surprise, surprise! Growing up poor sucks.

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Wonder why dirt poor Asian and African immigrants do so well?

As an Asian myself, the top Asians who go to your top law schools, medical schools, engineering schools aren't from dirt poor families. The wave of talent came mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan and India. A newer wave though is coming over from China, and given the population of China, its a much bigger wave that may disrupt and shake up the perception of Asians.

 

[First]

No this isn't a "fuck you I got mine" story. Its proving the liberal fuckwads wrong. You can stop being poor any time you would like. Get a job, work hard, get a better job. Repeat as often as necessary.

lol. So easy a caveman can do it.

 

[Zaap]

No, cavemen all sat around whining at the caveman in the next cave to go slaughter a mammoth for them, and to share their fire, otherwise "racist!"

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Liberal mentality exposed for what it is...depraved.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

As an Asian myself, the top Asians who go to your top law schools, medical schools, engineering schools aren't from dirt poor families. The wave of talent came mostly from Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan and India. A newer wave though is coming over from China, and given the population of China, its a much bigger wave that may disrupt and shake up the perception of Asians.

Who said anything about top schools? It holds up even at average schools.

 

[Belegost]

The blogpost here is a little bit brief, and grabs data to make a point they favor. It's well worth reading the full conference paper and understanding the data presented, as well as the discussion by the authors on their model and projected impacts of programs to improve results for disadvantaged children. It's rather well-written and approachable, and interesting that it advocates programs to add extra tutoring time, and social counseling, to help children gain the skills needed to be upwardly mobile instead of simply throwing money at parents.

I'll start by linking more of the plots below. These are social mobility matrices, on the x axis is the income quintile of the parents, and the y axis gives the percentage of children in quintile at 40 years old.

I list out my observations:

• Overall the middle 60% is pretty close to unbiased, and bottom and the top tend to have sticking power.
• Dropping out of high school provides almost certainly poor outcomes.
  • Even the drop-out kids of the top 20% have an 81% chance of winding up in the bottom 60%.
  • I wish the authors included data on high school grads with no college.
• Going to college generally pays off.
  • Those who make it through from the bottom, are 20x more likely to reach the top 20%.
  • Worth noting that the distribution for college grads from poor parents is pretty fair, but skewed upward. Suggests you get out what you put in.
  • Even with a college degree just a bit more than 1/3 kids from parents in the top 20% stay in the top 20%.
• Family coherence is critical.
  • Children from single mother homes have much worse prospects.
  • Further being poor hurts, but the chances of moving up to the top are about the same for all parent incomes
  • Having both parents is about as good as a college education (likely because those are highly overlapping)
  • Even having a two parents for part of childhood improves outcomes.

Overall I feel like the blogger from the Post cherry picked some graph bars to make a point without giving the fuller context. Overall I would say that family structure and education were far better indicators of future success than parental income.

If you average the percent of college grads ending up in the bottom %20, it's about 11.2% which is the same percent of rich kids ending up in the bottom 20%. Averaging across the college grads that end up in the top 20%, 31%, one percent better than being born to high income parents.

Seems to me like a college education tends to be an equalizing factor.



~edit~ I should point out that I don't show two plots discussing race and income results. I feel the authors did a disservice by only including a black vs. white comparison, and not breaking down race by education and family coherence as well. As such I see race as a red herring, a result variable covering up latent variables concerning education and family structure (and in turn more fundamental latent variables that are the drivers of those.) The poor level of detail in the reporting in the paper makes me feel like the authors were trying to hit some paper guidelines instead of making a serious investigation, and as such the results should be ignored until the authors produce a more thorough discussion.

 

[Vic]

Yes, let's ignore that human beings are organisms with an innate desire to reproduce and attempt to limit reproduction to people we've thoroughly vetted and identified as qualified to provide a proper home establishment to potential offspring. That plan can't fail!

Yeah, a small government should always have the power to decide who gets to reproduce and who doesn't. Oh no, wait..

But seriously, this is basic Mendel. "Poor" parents can raise a child with the ability to succeed. Likewise, "rich" parents can also bring forth lazy losers. Sure, the probability is skewed in one direction, but the possibility still happens every day, while we still protect that right. The promise of America has always been clear: the accident of birth by itself should not determine a person's fate.

 

[TheSlamma]

meh, just about every spoiled kid I ever knew and know doesn't grow up to amount to a hill of beans

 

[Subyman]

Study seems fine. Poor person that worked hard will have kids that have more than the poor people their parent's came from. If they make good decisions then those kid's kids will now be "rich" kids. Its not surprising that it takes generations to accrue the knowledge and position needed to become wealthy.

 

[shira]

And how do you explain the millions of people who grow up poor but do well?

Your response is dripping with intellectual dishonesty. First of all, those who "grow up poor" are not the same demographic group as those who have lived in entrenched poverty since they were freed as slaves. Secondly, arguing that "some people are able to escape poverty" therefore "everyone who grows up poor can escape poverty" completely ignores luck - being in the right place at the right time; having the right friends; being born with high intelligence; being born with great physical beauty or charisma or physical ability.

But go right on arguing that if one person can win the lottery everyone who doesn't only has themselves to blame.

 

[First]

The promise of America has always been clear: the accident of birth by itself should not determine a person's fate.

Yeah, indeed true, to an extent. But as this billionaire eloquently put it, "if any of us had been born in Somalia or the Congo, all we’d be is some guy standing barefoot next to a dirt road selling fruit".

Truth is, most non-partisans will agree that a solid majority of Americans (say 60%-70% for arguments sake) have won both the genetic and income lottery, having been born healthy and/or into a family with wealth far greater than most of the rest of the world. None of that has anything to do with merit, hard work, etc. Pure genetic lottery winners. And of course, that still leaves many, many millions who aren't wealthy and aren't healthy, many through no fault of your own.

 

[Zaap]

as those who have lived in entrenched poverty since they were freed as slaves.

Whoever you're talking about must be like, 180 years old or thereabouts.

 

[rudeguy]

Your response is dripping with intellectual dishonesty. First of all, those who "grow up poor" are not the same demographic group as those who have lived in entrenched poverty since they were freed as slaves. Secondly, arguing that "some people are able to escape poverty" therefore "everyone who grows up poor can escape poverty" completely ignores luck - being in the right place at the right time; having the right friends; being born with high intelligence; being born with great physical beauty or charisma or physical ability.

But go right on arguing that if one person can win the lottery everyone who doesn't only has themselves to blame.

How about those who were persecuted and killed by the millions?
How about those who were forcibly encamped by their own country?
Who says that all poor people are black?

You sir are an ignorant racist.

 

[jhbball]

Newsflash: Being poor isn't a disease!

I grew up poor. No...I grew up dirt poor, we were jealous of the poor people because they had Q Tips. My single mom raised 2 kids without any help from our sperm donor. She busted her ass and I learned from her.

I started working full time as soon as I was legally allowed to. I learned everything I could and did every job I could. I worked my way up the ranks fast because of that. Then a customer offered me a job and I took that. I moved up the ranks there using the same work ethic. Now I'm doing just fine.

No this isn't a "fuck you I got mine" story. Its proving the liberal fuckwads wrong. You can stop being poor any time you would like. Get a job, work hard, get a better job. Repeat as often as necessary.

lol.