The Bell Curve Part 11 Chapter 5-Poverty

Who becomes poor? It is commonly thought that people who are unlucky enough to be born to poor parents become poor. This was undoubtedly true in the beginning of the last century as discussed in previous chapters, but that is not the case today. At this point in time, whites with IQs at the bottom 5 percent of the distribution are fifteen times more likely to be poor than those with IQs in the top 5 percent. Today, if you have a choice it is much better to be born smart than rich. A white youth reared in a home in which the parent or parents were chronically unemployed, worked at only menial jobs, and had not gotten past the ninth grade, but had an average IQ of 100, has a 90 percent chance of being out of poverty by his or her thirtieth birthday. Conversely, a white child born to a solid middle class family, but with a below average IQ, faces a much higher risk of poverty, despite his more fortunate background. When compared to sex, marital status and years of education, intelligence remains the most important predictor of economic success, with marital status running a close second. Let's see why this is so. The authors of The Bell Curve begin with poverty because it is so much the center of concern with respect to our social problems. In 1939, over half of all Americans lived in families with incomes below the poverty line (by today's standards and in constant dollars). The levels of poverty continued to fall during the next 30 years reaching its lowest point of 10 percent in 1970. At that point, the numbers living in poverty began to slowly increase again and reached 15.5 percent by 2013. There are three lessons to be learned from this history. First, poverty cannot be a simple direct cause of problems like crime, illegitimacy and drug use because these forms of anti-social behavior were minor when poverty was endemic in the middle of the last century. In dead, if poverty were the root of these evils the history of the twentieth century would have chronicled their sharp decline. Second, the poor, as a group, have changed over time. As late as the 1940s the poor were indistinguishable from other members of the population except for the fact that they were poor. As poverty shrunk from over 50 percent of the population in the 1940s to less than 15 percent as it has been since the 1960s the people left behind are likely to be disproportionately those who suffer, not only from bad luck, but also from lack of energy, thrift, farsightedness, determination and, most importantly, brains. Finally, the poverty rate had been decreasing steadily for three decades prior to President Johnson's famous war on poverty began in the 1960s. Despite the trillions of dollars spent to eradicate poverty it has actually increased over the past 55 years from its low point of 10 percent in 1970. Just why is that? The first question the authors attempt to answer is possibly the most important. Can an IQ score taken at age 15 be a cause of poverty at age 30? What exactly does an intelligence test score mean for an adolescent who has grown up poor? Wouldn't his test score have been higher if his luck in home environment had been better? Yes, of course, the IQ of a given individual might have been 20 to 40 percent higher if he had been raised under more favorable circumstances. This issue is discussed in more detail in a later chapter, but for the purposes of Part 11 the question is not what might have been, but what is. The test scores for the NLSY sample were obtained when the subjects were 15 to 23 years in age and follow-up studies have shown that their initial IQ scores were already as deeply rooted a fact about them as were their height and eye color. From the mid-1800s to the 1960s poor people were divided into two groups, the deserving and the undeserving. Some people were thought to be poor because of circumstances beyond their control and others were poor because of circumstance under their control. This all changed in the 1960s, at that point poverty was viewed as a product of broad systemic causes which largely were beyond the individuals control. Much of the literature at that time focused on blacks and its roots in racism and does not apply to the topic at hand: poverty among non-Latino whites. In any case, data compiled in 1989 reveled that the poverty rate was similar, and low, in the 75 percent of the population who had normal or above average intelligence (cognitive classes-normal, bright and very bright). More importantly, in this large group of young people, those with differing socioeconomic backgrounds had similar low rates of poverty, which varied from 2 to 6 percent. This showed that those with only normal intelligence usually escaped poverty irrespective of the socioeconomic status of their parents. This was not the case for the dull and very dull who made up the bottom 25 percent of the cognitive ladder. Sixteen percent of those in the dull cognitive class were in poverty while a full 30 percent of those who tested very dull were impoverished. Thus, of the 25 percent of the population that tested dull or very dull, a whopping 45 percent were in poverty. Regression analysis was used to determine how much poverty depended on three independent variables: IQ, age and parental socioeconomic status (SES) in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). The analysis showed, as expected, that age was not important in determining whether a person was impoverished once the other factors of intelligence and family background were taken into account. This left two possible explanations for the observation that some ended up impoverished and some did not: the socioeconomic environment in which the NLSY youth grew up and his IQ score. The first line of the graft shown on page 134 of The Bell Curve shows that only 2 percent of those with IQs of 130 or higher ended up in poverty while 26 percent of those with IQs of 70 or lower were impoverished. The second line shows the chances of being impoverished as parental SES goes from very low to very high. Only 11 percent of those who grew up in abject poverty ended up impoverished themselves, while the poverty rate of those from very wealthy homes was less than 2 percent. This data suggests that, with few exceptions, a person ends up in poverty not because he was born poor but because he was born stupid. To put this in policy terms, the starting line remains unequal in American society, even among whites, but the magnitude of the disadvantage is not as large as one might expect. For example, a white person with an average IQ of only 100 born in 1961 to impoverished uneducated parents had only a 11 percent chance of being impoverished at age 28. Thus, there is a 89 percent chance that children will escape from the chains of poverty irrespective of the SES of their parents. The chances of becoming impoverished fall to slim to done for white children who were born with above average intelligence. Conversely, suppose a person was born to parents with average SES but was very dull. There is a 26 percent chance that this person will in poverty at age 28, more than twice as great as the odds facing the person from a deprived home but with average intellect. In summary, low intelligence equates to comparatively high risk of poverty. Now let's consider the role that education might play in poverty. The basis fact is simple, people who have a bachelors degree have average or above average IQs and seldom if ever end up impoverished, no matter the SES of their parents. For those with only a high school diploma the results are quite different. A young adult with only a high school diploma and a low IQ has a 24 percent chance of living in poverty while a high school graduate with a high IQ has less than a 2 percent chance of becoming impoverished. What about the growing number of poor who are children? As of 1991, 22 percent of all children under the age of 15 were below the official poverty line, twice the poverty rate of those 15 or older. It is commonly thought that poverty among children is something that has increased across the board in the United States, for all kinds of families, for reasons vaguely related to economic troubles, ungenerous social policies during the 1980s and, of course, discrimination against women and minority groups. Poverty among children always has been much higher in families headed by a single women, whether she is divorced or never married. In 1991 the poverty rate for single women was 36 percent; for all other American families, 6 percent. This statistic hasn't changed much since official poverty figures first became available in 1959. Now let's consider the role of the mother's IQ in childhood poverty. The figure on page 138 of The Bell Curve shows the role of the mother's IQ in determining which white children are poor. The graft shows that 70 percent of the children of single white women with very low IQs live in poverty while the chances of a child living in poverty if his mother has a high IQ is only 10 percent. If a single white mother has an average IQ there is a 33 percent chance her children will be impoverished. The children of married white mothers fair much better even if the married mother is markedly below average in cognitive ability. Interestingly, it makes little difference which kind of "non-marriage" we are talking about- separation, divorce or never married at all. The chances of childhood poverty in these three groups were drastically different from the results of married women and quite similar to each other. The above graft showed the effect the unmarried mother's IQ had on the childhood poverty rate if the mother's socioeconomic background were held constant. The graft on following page shows that the mother's SES background played only a minor role, if any, in determining whether the children of single white mothers would live in poverty. Comment: A major theme in United States public policy for the past 55 years has been that socioeconomic disadvantage is the driving force behind poverty. The statistics provided in this chapter show that this isn't so for whites. To the contrary, the high rates of poverty in certain segments of the white non-Latino population are determined more by intelligence than by socioeconomic background. Interestingly, the poverty rates for low IQ whiles of 30 percent is similar to the incidence of poverty in poor urban neighborhood comprised mostly of blacks and Latinos. Thus, these impoverished whites become poor despite the fact that they are supposed to be advantaged Americans because of their white skin and European decent. Why? Because they have one thing working against them: they are not very smart! It, of course, is not their fault: they were born dumb. Many, if not most, readers will conclude that the authors have made the case for sweeping policy changes to rectify what can only be interpreted as a palpably unfair result. And, indeed they have. The overriding issue is not so much how people who are poor, through no fault of their own, can be made not poor: rather, the goal should be to find a way that we all can live together is a society in which all of us, irrespective of inherited intelligence and socioeconomic background, can pursue and achieve some degree of happiness and, most importantly, that feeling of self worth so essential to the mental well being of all humans. I cover this subject extensively in my book America In Decline- Causes and Solutions. I suggest several rather simple solutions to the problems that face modern America. None of these commonsense

remedies will break the bank! For example, rather than paying welfare mother to have illegitimate children, as we do now, we should be paying them a stipend to have a Norplant injection that will prevent pregnancy for five years. Such a policy would reduce the rate of illegitimacy, lower the crime rate and reduce the incidence of poverty. Like if you agree.