Tag Archives: Socioeconomic

Education: Socioeconomic Impacts – The Bell Curve

Last week I posted on the impact that socioeconomic status had on childhood poverty.  I don’t think anyone was surprised to see that children who come from parents/mothers with a lower standard of living have a greater chance of growing up poor than children whose parents/mother had a higher standard of living:

The data is hard to argue with.  The “well off-ness” of the parents seems to have a powerful impact on the chance of poverty of a child.

The book continues this investigation as it relates to education, both high school and college.

First, the authors discuss high school and the rate of drop-outs.  That is, what is the probability of a kid finishing high school?  And they took a look at this through the lens of the socioeconomic status of the child’s parents.  Again, the scale is broken into 5 parts; the median is in the middle and from the center the scale moves on by 1 standard deviation and then another.

When everything else is held constant, the probability of dropping out of school based on the socioeconomic status of the parents looks like this:

The data is striking.  Kids from poorer households dropout of high school a very higher rates than kids from wealthier households.  If you look at the extremes, the poorest kids drop out at a rate ~10x as high as the kids from the wealthiest households.

Now take a minute and consider college education and obtaining a 4 year degree.  Consider what you might expect the data to show.  If the data is consistent with our previous peeks into the impact that SES has on aspects of kids, we might make a pretty good guess.

Here’s the data:

Just as we might expect.  The role of the socioeconomic status of the parents is a powerful one for kids who wanna obtain a college degree.  Everything else being equal, there is almost no chance that a kid coming from the poorest families will achieve the the thrill of obtaining a diploma while the same kid from our wealthiest families has near a 40% of graduating.

As we close this section I’m struck by two things:

1.  Even our richest families are producing college graduates at a less than 40% clip.

2.  The wealth of a kids family continues to play a powerful role.

Poverty: Socioeconomic Impacts – The Bell Curve

I’m reading “The Bell Curve” and am finding the book fascinating.  As I mentioned in my previous post on this topic:

That attaining wealth is more and more becoming reserved for the pre-existing well to do’s.

For a long time I’ve fought this belief.  I’ve fought the idea that America is not the land of opportunity.  That we’ve somehow lost the idea that if you work hard enough you can do anything.

I’ve fought it.

And now I’m reading a book, The Bell Curve, and I’ve seen some interesting data.  For example, it seems to be important where you come from if you wanna avoid poverty:

As I continue to make my way through the book, there is good data that reinforces the above statement.  Namely, where you come from, or who you are born to, impacts where you will end up.  Consider the white population:

I can only estimate the data above, the book doesn’t provide exact numbers, but you can see that as parental SES goes from 2 standard deviations below the mean to 2 standard deviations above the mean, the chance that an individual finds themselves in poverty is reduced.  In fact, if you look at the numbers, the families at the far poor end of the scale have almost three times the chance to produce poor children than the very well off families at the other end.

What if we dig deeper in the data?  What happens if we look at the probability that a child lives in poverty?  How does socioeconomic status impact that?

Well, it turns out that the data is divided.  For example, consider married white mothers:

Interesting.

It turns out that that being a married mother helps reduce the chance of childhood poverty.  Reduces but only slightly.  However, what is interesting is that the impact of a higher socioeconomic parent is magnified.  In the general public, a higher parental SES ranking meant that an adult had 1/3 the chance of ending up in poverty.  For children, it’s much more dramatic.

For a child, having parents in the lowest SES class means that poverty is ~5.5 times as likely than if that child came from parents in the highest SES rankings.  That is, kids from the most well of parents suffer poverty at rates of about 2%.  Kids from the least well off suffer poverty at rates of about 11%.

Now for the shocker.  Let’s look at single white mothers:

WOW!

Kids of white mothers that are either separated, divorced o r never married suffer massively higher rates of poverty than mothers of kids who are married.  But again, for the sake of this specific conversation, the socioeconomic ranking of the parents is meaningful.  Parents who rank at the very low end raise kids who have approximately a 39% chance of being in poverty.  Mothers who are in the top ranks of socioeconomic ranking?  Their kids only have about a 30% chance of living in poverty, almost a 33% less chance.

The data is hard to argue with.  The “well off-ness” of the parents seems to have a powerful impact on the chance of poverty of a child.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poverty And Class In America

There’s been a lot of discussion surrounding the mobility between classes here in America.  At the same time, there’s been a lot of discussion surrounding the importance of education.  Not only getting a high school diploma but on getting a college one as well.  In fact, it’s gone so far as to have people calling for free college education for all Americans.  The argument is that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.  That income mobility in America is restricted.  That attaining wealth is more and more becoming reserved for the pre-existing well to do’s.

For a long time I’ve fought this belief.  I’ve fought the idea that America is not the land of opportunity.  That we’ve somehow lost the idea that if you work hard enough you can do anything.

I’ve fought it.

And now I’m reading a book, The Bell Curve, and I’ve seen some interesting data.  For example, it seems to be important where you come from if you wanna avoid poverty:

If you’re born to a family with very low socioeconomic class, you have an 8 times better chance to find yourself in poverty than if you were born to a family with a very high socioeconomic status.

It would seem that class matters.

Further, when it comes to wages, the data suggests that there is an education gap that would strengthen the argument that we need to increase college degrees to our kids:

It’s hard to argue the numbers.  High school droop-outs are seeing their wages drop by double digits while college graduates are seeing double digit increases.

Interesting data to be sure.