By Simon Grey, on February 9th, 2012
Like this isn’t an attempt to split a non-existent hair: The segregation model predicts that as the society gets wealthier, the dollar cost of college will get higher. The signaling model would not necessarily predict that. In fact, it would predict that the market would try to find less expensive signals.
It’s like Kling has never heard of anyone signaling their status through conspicuous spending. As anyone who has ever observed human beings can readily attest to, there are plenty of people who spend money just to show that they have money to spend. Why shouldn’t this form of signaling extend to higher education?
Let us suppose that college serves as a way for young people to be sorted into their societal roles. Those who go to more prestigious (read: expensive and/or exclusive) colleges will likely come from families that are relatively wealthy.* They will also spend a lot on their education, relatively speaking.
Signaling theory would suggest the exact same thing, for there is a) a general correlation between the cost of college and its prestige and also b) a general correlation between family wealth and college choice. That is to say, the children of wealthier parents are more likely to buy social prestige at college, and will be charged a lot to do so. Now, given the limited number of prestigious colleges and universities, it should be the case that more prestigious universities command a higher price, and that students from higher-class families are able to pay them. Thus, signaling theory predicts an outcome extremely similar to segregation theory.
What Kling neglects, then, in attempting to differentiate segregation from signaling is that some signals do not become “cheaper” over time because some signals only work because they are expensive. What Kling must prove, then, is that the signaling theory of post-secondary education is flawed because college is not a cost-driven signal. Until then, his assertion regarding the predictive ability of signaling theory is incorrect, and his attempt to differentiate between signaling and segregation is pointless.
* There are some general exceptions to this, obviously, as even impoverished minorities can occasionally make it to Harvard. But, for the most part, the people who go to pricier colleges can generally pay for them.
By Simon Grey, on December 27th, 2011
During the legislative debate before enactment of the 16th Amendment, Republican President William Taft and congressional supporters argued that only the rich would ever pay federal income taxes. In fact, in 1913, only one-half of 1 percent of income earners were affected. Those earning $250,000 a year in today’s dollars paid 1 percent, and those earning $6 million in today’s dollars paid 7 percent. The 16th Amendment never would have been enacted had Americans not been duped into believing that only the rich would pay income taxes. It was simply a lie to exploit American gullibility and envy.
I believe it was either last year, or possibly in the spring of this year, when conservatives got their panties in know over how 49% of all taxpayers paid no income taxes (though, funnily enough, all taxpayers still paid their FICA and other payroll taxes). The theory was that there would arise a class of professional voters, who would simply elect officials to pay take money from the rich and give it to the more-deserving poor, of which said professional voters just so happened to be a part.
The reality appears to be a bit different, at least historically speaking. When the income tax was first enacted, it only applied to the rich, who comprised 0.5% of the population. Thus, the percentage of the population paying the income tax increased 100-fold over 98 years to 51%. If the theory of professional voters were true, the percentage of taxpayers should have at least remained stable (or even decreased) while the tax rates should have remained stable or increased. Reality, as it were, is markedly different.
In spite of all the attempts at class warfare in the last one hundred or so years, the poor still get screwed over by the rich. This is probably because there is a strong correlation between a general form of stupidity and poverty,* as well as a strong correlation between wealth and general intelligence. In essence, the wealthy are generally intelligent enough to figure out how to make things work to their advantage (hence their wealth). If one is cunning enough to convince people to buy something they don’t need, it seems plausible that one could also sell someone a political policy that works to their disadvantage.
The historical norm has been that poor people pay quite a bit in taxes, and the wealthy are often the beneficiaries of those taxes (think of the feudal system as a general model of this). The idea that those who are intelligent enough to become quite wealthy won’t also be intelligent enough to protect their wealth is, quite frankly, absurd, and the idea that somehow the poor will manage to “reappropriate” wealth from the rich is even more absurd.
* Two quick notes: a lack of education generally correlates to stupidity, which in turn correlates to lower income (as evidence by the myriad statistics showing that high school dropouts earn less than those with a high school diploma, bachelor’s degree, etc.) Also, shorter time horizons also correlate to stupidity as well.
By Winton Bates, on October 11th, 2010
 In his book, ‘A Theory of Justice’, John Rawls considered what principles of justice would be agreed upon by all behind a veil of ignorance in which no one knows their place in society – their wealth, their class position or social status, their intelligence, strength, state of health etc. One of the principles that Rawls argued would be agreed upon is the ‘difference principle’ – that social and economic inequalities should exist only insofar as they benefit the least well off members of society.  I think the veil of ignorance thought experiment is useful to consider public policy issues from a perspective that is broader than my own perceived interests. When I do this thought experiment, however, I don’t endorse the difference principle (sometimes referred to as the maximin principle). The principle I come up with is to maximize the opportunities of any person chosen at random, subject to provision of a safety net to protect the well-being of the least well off members of society. I expect that some critics would say, however, that I get this outcome because I am not doing the thought experiment properly.
A study undertaken by Hörisch Hannah a couple of years ago does not seem to have the same potential for personal bias to influence the results obtained. Hannah implemented the Rawlsian veil of ignorance in a laboratory experiment using variants of the dictator game (see: ‘Is the veil of ignorance only a concept about risk? An experiment’, Munich Discussion Paper No 2007-4). In the first experiment, one player, the dictator, decides how much of the pie will be received by the other player, given an efficiency loss of 50 percent for units that are transferred from the dictator to the receiver. The veil of ignorance is implemented by requiring each player to decide how much to give to the other player before being assigned the role of dictator or receiver (with equal probability). The second experiment is the same as the first except that the role of receiver is not actually assigned to a person so the outcome can be interpreted as a self-interested response to risk.
Only a minority of subjects opted for the maximin principle under either experiment. The vast majority of male participants perceived the veil of ignorance as introducing only risk. Among women participants, however, impartial social preferences were a second significant motivation that induces stronger concern for equality.
Although I think the results of the study are extremely interesting, they can hardly be presumed to reflect universal values. The study is quite small, with only 167 participants (all university students). There may be potential for bias because about two-thirds of respondents have studied some economics. It would be interesting to see results for similar studies, for people of different ages and backgrounds in different countries.
It would also be interesting to know whether there is any link between the values that people display when they play this game and their political views. Are the views of individual voters strongly influenced by principles that they support irrespective of their own perceived interests? If so, then perhaps politicians are whistling the wrong tune (or whistling to the wrong dog) when they are seen all the time to be responding to rent-seeking by narrow interest groups.
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By Winton Bates, on May 18th, 2009
Your chances of success in life depend on your intelligence, your family background and your temperament, don’t they? Yes, to some extent. But over the last few days I have read about research findings which suggest that beyond a threshold IQ doesn’t make much difference, the important aspects of family background are only superficially related to wealth and the predictive importance of childhood temperament tends to diminish over time.
In “Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of research conducted by Lewis Terman who identified 1,470 Californian children with very high IQs (over 130) in the 1920s. Terman believed initially that members of this group were destined to be among the future elite of the U.S. When they grew up, however, the majority had careers that could only be considered ordinary. It turns out that the relationship between IQ and success works only up to a point. Additional points of IQ beyond about 120 (remember the population average equals 100) don’t seem to have much impact on success.
Further analysis divided these genius subjects into three groups and looked for reasons for differences between the achievements of the most successful and least successful groups. The main difference seemed to be that the most successful performers came from the middle and upper class – the most successful group contained almost none of the children from the lowest socioeconomic class. Later in his book Gladwell points to evidence which suggests that the link to socioeconomic class has little to do with things that are directly associated with wealth or even with the quality of schooling. Research by Karl Alexander shows, for example, that the main difference between reading scores between elementary school children emerge during the summer vacation period while they are not at school. The wealthier parents tend to cultivate the interests of their children in reading etc. even during the summer vacation period. The difference seems to have more to do with culture than with income.
Gladwell’s main point is that it is impossible for superstars in any field to look down from their lofty perches and say with truthfulness, “I did this all by myself”. Gladwell argues: “They are the products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. … The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all” (p 285).
Something else I have read recently that relates to the determinants of successful lives is Joshua Wolf Shenk’s article “What Makes Us Happy” (The Atlantic Online, June 2009). Shenk’s article discusses George Vaillant’s research, based on the Harvard Study of Adult Development. This study of healthy, well-adjusted Harvard students began in 1937 and followed its subjects for more than 70 years. As with Terman’s study, the leading researcher originally involved in the Harvard study thought he would be studying a group of people who would have successful lives. Many did in fact achieve dramatic success, but by age 50 almost a third of the subjects had at one time or another met Vaillant’s criteria for mental illness.
One of Vaillant’s findings is that the predictive importance of childhood temperament diminishes over time: shy, anxious kids tend to do poorly in young adulthood, but by age 70 they are just as likely as the outgoing kids to be happy and well. One of the factors that he found to predict healthy aging is “employing mature adaptations” to life’s troubles. Mature adaptations include altruism, humour, anticipation (planning for future discomfort) and delaying attention to an impulse or conflict. The second most important factor that he found to predict healthy aging was the quality of relationships, including with siblings, friends and mentors.
Will Wilkinson comments on his blog: “What I liked so much about this essay, and about Vaillant, is the recognition that the complexity of human psychology, the complexity of coping and adapting to the challenges life throws up, makes relationships or “social aptitude” no simple thing.” I agree.
This brings me back to Gladwell’s book. One of the things from “Outliers” that will stick in my mind is Gladwell’s account of the Roseto mystery. In brief, in the 1950s the inhabitants of Roseto (Pennsylvania), whose ancestors came from a town of the same name in Italy, had a very low incidence of heart disease and their death rate from all causes was 30 to 35 percent lower than expected. Researchers ruled out all the obvious causes such as diet, exercise, genes and location. Their explanation was that Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world. In Gladwell’s words, it was about “the mysterious and magical benefits of people stopping to talk to one another on the street and of having three generations under one roof” (p 10).
This is very interesting and very complex. I find myself reacting in three different ways. First, in statistical terms “outliers” are chance events; before getting too excited about sociological implications we should establish whether there is evidence that other communities which share similar characteristics to Roseto in the 1950s have similar health outcomes. Second, leaving aside the “mysterious and magical” factors, the most useful place to look for an explanation would be in the links between happiness (emotional health) and physical health. Third, perhaps it is time I had a closer look at the research findings behind those headlines a few months ago which claimed that scientists now have evidence that happiness is contagious.
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