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Multiples' Marshmallows Idea
A tidbit I picked up recently. There's a famous experiment called the rooks&sn
02&sc=613">"Marshmallow Test", the basics of which are that you put a marshmallow in front of a child. The adult leaves the room and says that, if the child can hold off eating the marshmallow until the researcher comes back, the child can have two marshmallows.
Some kids ate the marshmallows immediately, some waited the full 20 minutes. Following up on the experiment, the researcher found that the children who couldn't wait had worse experiences later in life - less achievement, more drugs, family troubles, crime, habits.
I've known about the original test for a while, but, just recently, I found this video, where another researcher did the test on the first surviving set of sextuplets in America. The result was that each one of them passed. The theory presented was that being in a large family gave the children an advantage in terms of cooperation, delayed gratification.
Days back, I went looking for social graphs that seemed to mirror violent crime trends. One of the graphs that fit was "Number of People Per Household". Passingly interesting in terms of how all that might play into the loneliness, porn connection.
- RedBeard's blog
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Comments
Re: Marnia.
That graph was measuring average person per household by year, but I was looking around for graphs that seemed to match another graph, violent crime trends in which crime rates rise dramatically from 1960 to 1990, peaking, then dropping hard.
Economics indicators didn't fit the overall trend: GDP per capita, poverty rates, inequality index
At least, the economic indicators didn't fit until they were measured per family: Median "family" income per GDP, and especially an inequality index by families. Something was happening with families.
Divorce rates seemed to fit close enough. Also, birthrates spiked from 1950-1970, just before people started divorcing like mad.
Others: things like out-of-wedlock births as a percentage of all births, as well as "total number of births" also had similar peaks and dips. The shift from rural to urban, sort of, but not really.
Yep, this is what I do with my free time. Anybody want to take a shot at it? What happened from 1960 to 1990, and what happened in 1991?
Math
Do you use a mathematical formula to determine amount of correlation?
Economics
GDP is not a great measure for this, better for measuring differences between countries than within, and even then it's not at all precise. Birthrate spikes after 1950 were due to the soldiers returning from war, the baby boomers, and probably the "sexual revolution," because I'm sure many women still weren't using birth control.
The 1960s and 1970s saw the deterioration of manufacturing cities, a process called deindustrialization - leading to "white flight" and greater suburbanization - creating the phenomenon we have here in America, the forgotten inner-city. The 1960s and 70s saw a lot of urban riots for this reason, competition for jobs and scarce resources make people quite intolerant of others, more so than usual. Continuing economic shifts throughout the 1980s as America became more conservative and concerned about individual advancement rather than collective advancement, and widening the gap between rich and poor.
As far as the reason for the jump in 1991... recession, baby, recession.
I think also there may have been some changes in the 1990s as to what was actually considered "violent crime," but please don't quote me on that.
Abortion?
Some recent book (Freakanomics maybe?) attributed the 1990's decrease in crime to (1) the '70's and '80's criminals getting old and quitting (or being permanently imprisoned) and (2) a relatively smaller new generation of potential criminals due to the fact that legalized abortion eliminated many 'unwanted babies' (i.e. potential criminals) after 1973.
As for what happened in 1991...the first Gulf War? Collapse of the soviet union? The Killeen, TX massacre? Release of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the public? The arrest of Jeffrey Dahmer? Potential violent criminals either got sick of violent crime in the news, got religion, or got shipped off to war?
I was eight years old in 1991, and we all know about the quality of public education in this country, so I can hardly be expected to identify any recent historical causes of a social trend...
*chuckle*
How are you doing, Brick?
Aha!
The collapse of the USSR, I didn't even think of that! I officially blame the Russians, although I've lost track of what it was we were discussing here. As far as the thing about the number in each household declining, separate from the crime issue, it is pretty standard that those numbers decrease once a nation becomes officially a member of the "developed" world. I think it has something to do with women getting educated and joining the workforce, and well, urbanization means that there are just so many other wonderful things for us to do instead of having babies, in my humble opinion, of course.
I, for one, am relieved to see those numbers falling, for reasons mentioned above, yet I know that other factors lead to this as well, such as single parent homes, and so on. I am also terrified when I look at those numbers of people per household in the "developing" world as they skyrocket - because we have the technology to allow more babies to survive, but not the economic structure to provide them the opportunities to live happy and productive lives. We are out of balance.
And to any Russians who may be reading this, I was just kidding about this being your fault. I love you guys.