10 ms·

Die young, live fast: The evolution of an underclass

109 points by redoacs 16y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Single page: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young-live-fast-the-evolution-of-an-underclass.html?full=true http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young...
joe_the_user 16y ago
How much validity is there in positing the evolution of different contemporary human subgroups when these change at a fairly rapid rate and intermingle quite readily? The modern "underclass" has probably only existed for at most, 100-200 years in various places. That's 3-10 generations with plenty of gene-movement in and out of the group in the meantime. It seems a bit more plausible to me to argue that humans already have a variety of strategies for reproduction and different circumstances bring out different strategies. My impression is that in peasant societies, teenage pregnancy is very common and families try to maximize the production of children. However, in hunter-gather societies, which pre-date peasant societies, my vague understanding that is teen-pregnancy is less common and there is less maximization of reproduction since population is often consciously consciously kept in the bounds of the land's productivity.
- SandB0x 16y ago
  > How much validity is there in positing the evolution of different contemporary human subgroups when these change at a fairly rapid rate and intermingle quite readily? The article doesn't suggest that subgroups have evolved, rather that we have evolved to produce offspring sooner and faster in response to harsh conditions. (So basically what you write in the rest of your post agrees with the article. I think!)
  - sethg 16y ago
    Do we even need to hypothesize this as a specialized evolutionary response? “My life sucks; studying hard and looking for a job will not make it suck less, because even if I get good grades, nobody will hire me; however, if I have a baby, then there will at least be something cute in my immediate environment that loves me” looks like a straightforward chain of logical reasoning to me.
    - Unseelie 16y ago
      Snarky response is that we don't need hypothesises at all anymore, we understand enough of the universe to be rather ok. But there is value in accepting this theory, which I might add is reasonably well accepted as far as most other mammals. The value is that your chain of logic blames first the people themselves, and feeds back into the aticle's final justification, that is, while such things as increasing education are politically expedient, they don't actually change conditions. Getting this theory widely accepted can do a great deal for changing how governments fight the problems of poverty.
    - SandB0x 16y ago
      It's one factor - there are going to be a whole host of influences. But remember even cuteness is an evolutionary response. Nature selects for mothers who care for little things with wide eyes and big heads. If you're interested in evolutionary psychology and the nature-nurture debate I highly recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
    - watmough 16y ago
      If there is a shortage of viable fathers in the local community, then having a baby will frequently lead to preferential financial and housing outcomes. More benefits, and a much better chance of getting social housing. There's very little way to get out of this cycle, besides either creating a lot of jobs, sufficient that men become useful, or simply increasing peoples' benefits such that strategies like having babies no longer get you a better outcome.
  - cschwarm 16y ago
    > we have evolved to produce offspring sooner and faster in response to harsh conditions. One could also understand the article the other way around: We have evolved to reproduce in response to natural conditions, and one result is women being able to get pregnant at about 15. Now, why should something like this happen if the natural 'optimum' would be rather 20 or 25? Read this way, the fact that needs an explanation is women getting pregnant rather late.
- notahacker 16y ago
  They're surely positing an evolution of _behaviour_ rather than genetics. Either way they're approaching it from the wrong angle with the somewhat patronising "underclass" suggestions. A significant proportion of girls having children fairly young is the norm in the developing world and has been the norm in the West for a long time. It's the deliberate decisions of "upper classes" to defer conception/birth until long after becoming sexually active in order to prioritise other goals that's the [unnatural] development. And it's the middle class people opting to have their first children late after achieving their career goals who are the outliers.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
The article is seriously flawed, because it completely discounts the possibility that the fast lifestyle is the cause of the pathologies of the poor. It mentions the oft-cited statistic that 2000 calories of junk food is cheaper than 2000 calories of vegetables. The fact is true, but irrelevant; if you are overweight or obese (as most of the poor are), you can reduce your caloric intake and increase food quality for the same cost. A few of the poor may be working dangerous jobs, but the vast majority of the poor are simply not working. When you subject individuals from affluent (or poor, but foreign) backgrounds to US poverty-like conditions, they rarely exhibit the same pathologies. Graduate students earn very little money, but don't become obese. Indian immigrants in Jersey City, which includes guys working at fast food places, don't turn to crime, teen pregnancy [1] or exhibit the poor health that Americans do. That isn't what you'd expect if environment, rather than personal choices, were the driving factor. [1] They do reproduce fairly early, but this is caused by different pathologies (forcing girls into arranged marriages at an early age) and it occurs even among affluent Indians.
- Unseelie 16y ago
  You're discounting the argument that the fast lifestyle isn't a response to poverty, but a response to expectations of poverty. Environment as it affects someone born into poverty without examples of persons who grow out of it, rather than a grad student(really a laughable argument that a grad student is 'poor' considering the value of their education.) or an immigrant to the nation, come to find opportunity...
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    The theory that people respond to expected future "poverty" [1] rather than their current circumstances is certainly harder to falsify. But I definitely dispute the assertion that people living in poor regions lack examples of people who grew out of it. It's certainly not true in the poor neighborhoods I've lived in (and currently live in). There are plenty of people who stayed in school, kept their heads down and achieved a solidly middle class lifestyle. They often remain involved with the local community, typically the church and extended family. [1] I find it very difficult to use the term "poverty" to describe the bottom 10% of Americans, seeing as all their material needs are met and they consume more leisure than any other group.
brondaire 16y ago
Anytime an article hits Hacker News such as this; that is, with explicit references to class and socioeconomic status, I cringe as I read the comments. The comments are both predictable, and utterly devastating. Psychology is largely at play here, since both the Fundamental attribution error (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error) and cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance) have extremely strong effects. For the most part, the readership here often seems to be completely unaware of the daily realities of a very real underclass in western societies. Environment has a profound effect on our individual development. I've lived a privileged life. I have many close friends who were not so fortunate. I could not possibly imagine my life circumstances today if I had to face what some of my friends did.
- todayiamme 16y ago
  It's not their fault. Most people simply don't know what bottomless despair is like. Even fewer know what it's like to have no resources whatsoever to deal with it. I sometimes still cry and question why I wasn't born normal like others. It doesn't matter what I know and understand. It doesn't matter what I tell myself. I still feel that stab. I couldn't have imagined what this felt like until I had to go through it, and herein lies the problem. The people who often try to erase social injustices are those who have lived a life of privilege and have absolutely no idea what it's like on the other side. A lot of them rely on second or third hand sources, but they often fail to get the gist of things. This isn't something wrong on it's own, but whenever people are frustrated they tend to grope for explanations and a lot of people fail to give this any thought whatsoever. Even though this article seems to be well intentioned, but stuff like this hurts people in the longer run. Take a look at this; >>>It is not simply a case of teenage girls from deprived backgrounds accidentally becoming pregnant. Evidence from many sources suggests that teen pregnancy rates are similar in poor and affluent communities. However, motherhood is a choice, as both Geronimus and Johns are keen to point out. Teenage girls from affluent backgrounds are more likely to have abortions than their less-privileged peers. In terms of reproduction, the more affluent girls are best off concentrating on their own career and development so that they can invest more in the children they have at a later stage. "It seems that girls are assessing their life chances on a number of fronts and making conscious decisions about reproduction," says Johns.<<< The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions. Even if there are clinics that perform this for an extremely low cost. Most people lack access and awareness in the ghetto, which is just another side effect of growing up there. Affluent children can think about their life choices because they have the luxury of doing so. Most children from the ghetto don't. The very idea that such behavior is driven by genetic impulses is something that shows a flawed understanding of the entire concept at some stage by the writer. I am not an expert on it, but Richard Dawkins surely is and he takes the pains to point out that genes are like a coder who writes a complex AI program. After her/his job is finished the program is on its own. If you think about it everything comes down to genetic impulses and the environment plays a crucial role in determining those impulses, but in humans another paradigm also comes into the equation; the ability for us to make a conscious choice. What I am trying to say is that the expert who wrote that paper is trying to get an extremely valuable point across, but the way it is used to explain everything is demeaning and flawed. There is no magic bullet for such problems, and you really need not resort to such things. Good ole' hard work with dedication and understanding ought to do. [edit: I forgot to add "flawed understanding by the writer" the expert who has been quoted is spot on, but the general conclusions derived seem to be pretty shabby.]
KingOfB 16y ago
The title to the article is a total troll. The real interesting factor is that an 'upper class' has evolved that reduces birth rates in exchange for power (education/money). The underclass has always been there. It might be interesting to compare growth rates of the two, but neither are a new thing.
greenlblue 16y ago
Not much new here but I'm always suspicious of anything with an 'evolutionary psychology approved' sticker. I know that the basis of the theory is that most behavior is a response to maximizing gene propagation but I haven't seen the theory used to rule out any behaviors. It basically justifies whatever is the status quo with what sounds like science because the initial hypothesis sounds reasonable and scientific.
- davnola 16y ago
  > I haven't seen the theory used to rule out any behaviors The article itself includes more than one example. E.g. the researchers hypothesized that, given some premises about evolution, poor women would have more kids earlier. This rules out them having fewer kids later. Then they went and tested it.
  - Nwallins 16y ago
    > the researchers hypothesized that, given some premises about evolution, poor women would have more kids earlier. Um, isn't this already well known? Did they not craft the hypothesis to fit their existing understanding? > Then they went and tested it. No comment.
    - davnola 16y ago
      > Um, isn't this already well known? No idea. The point is that it's a substantive claim that could be tested empirically. > Did they not craft the hypothesis to fit their existing understanding? I hope so. Using what you already know helps generate interesting hypotheses. They don't pop into existence asexually.
  - greenlblue 16y ago
    If evolutionary psychology explains why poor people act the way they do then it should be able to do the same for rich people as well. But I never see any papers or popular articles in evolutionary psychology explain why rich people have fewer kids. After all if people just want to propagate their genes and all our behaviors over the eons evolved for such a purpose then why do rich and educated people have fewer kids? It seems to contradict the basic premise of evolutionary psychology but no one seems to address this or just waves it away by saying "Oh, well humans are more complicated when it comes to learned behavior except of course when those people are poor in which case evolution and selfish genes rule". This double standard in an obviously symmetric situation is what makes me suspicious of evolutionary psychology. In fact it seems that according to evolutionary theory the rich would have a lot more kids since they have the resources to support those kids but that's not what happens.
dkarl 16y ago
The article seems to confirm the idea that we can't improve the life of the underclass, we can only shrink the underclass by moving people out of it. Unfortunately, not many people who are magically plucked out of their culture and society (via scholarships or employment) can bear to alienate themselves from their roots forever, so that isn't a solution, either. Even if we consistently skim off the exceptional individuals who are capable of handling that kind of dislocation, the underclass will sustain itself. Personally, I think the solution is to provide a minimum guaranteed standard of living, no questions asked, no silly ragged patchwork quilt of programs, just a minimum standard of living. Not enough to remove the stigma of poverty -- we don't want people to be comfortable or satisfied on the dole -- just enough to make it worthwhile for people to invest in themselves and avoid anti-social behavior. What we will then discover is whether an absolute level economic subsistence can transform behavior, or whether it is the stigma of relative poverty that causes people to behave antisocially.
- runT1ME 16y ago
  I agree with everything you say, but the problem is, what is the minimum standard without people being comfortable? Unfortunately, I know more than a couple in my family who despite having an iPhone and big screen TV, also have declared bankruptcy a few times, and will go on food stamps at times.
- henrikschroder 16y ago
  Belonging to the working class or underclass means not only that you lack the money and resources of the classes above you, it also means that you have a completely different outlook on life. What you suggest would take generations before you get any real results.
  - yungchin 16y ago
    Yes, intuitively I'd also expect it to take many generations. But the article's examples - Sweden, Japan (both effects established post-WWII I suppose), the North Carolina district (1990s!) - surprisingly suggest otherwise.
aarp 16y ago
sometimes i cry when i think about poor people.
jgg 16y ago
This article reminds me of one of my "favorite" fallacies that people fall for: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Just-world_phenomenon https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Just-world_ph...
waratuman 16y ago
"There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won't just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society's problems are - and it will suggest better solutions." I strongly disagree with this statement. This view means that humans are taking the passenger seat when they can in fact take control of their lives. If you live by the motto of "well this is what life gave me" you will never go anywhere.
ams6110 16y ago
Could it be as simple as, in most societies, if you are poor, the more kids you have, the more welfare you receive. Also if the father is not around, you are more likely to qualify for welfare. When you reward a behavior, people tend to do more of it.
c00p3r 16y ago
Wanna proof? Visit Russia (or any ex. East block country)! ^_^
earth 16y ago
I personally believe that your environment makes all the choices for you. If you were locked in a blank box from birth, what choices could or would you make? Poor people are not stupid and if you think that I guess I would label you stupid. Before you jump on your horse and say I would work hard and study hard to get out of a shit life, what do you even mean by that? You would be an entirely different person raised in those circumstances. Also some people make it out of the vicious cycle but I believe thats only luck based and they've just happened to meet some people who have said some useful things. The article itself doesn't really mean anything and I wouldn't say teenage pregnancy is related to evolution. In third world countries having more children is probably the best solution if you lack an education and survive off labour.
chopsueyar 16y ago
Am I the only one who read this and thought there is only one way to prove this? Find several thousand wealthy couples. Take away their wealth, reducing them to poverty. Watch them make babies. Evaluate empirical data. Maybe we should look at former and current US mortgage brokers over the past decade?
jdietrich 16y ago
I worked for two years as a welfare advisor in one of the poorest towns in the UK. What nobody ever thinks about in this debate is the economic incentives created by our welfare system. In that work, I spoke to numerous young women who were planning on getting pregnant in order to improve their income and get access to better housing. If you're poor, British and female, having a baby is a good career move. As soon as that child is born, your income effectively doubles. The state pays you more cash benefits, your allowance for rent payments increases significantly and you become eligible for an array of other benefits, starting with a £500 ($770) payment before the birth. You become "in priority need of housing" and therefore gain the legal right to accommodation, jumping the queue for social housing. Reproducing early may or may not be rational in Darwinian terms, but if you've just left school at sixteen with no qualifications and your community has 20% unemployment, it's certainly economically rational.

109 points by redoacs 16y ago

Single page: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young-live-fast-the-evolution-of-an-underclass.html?full=true http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727692.100-die-young...

joe_the_user 16y ago

How much validity is there in positing the evolution of different contemporary human subgroups when these change at a fairly rapid rate and intermingle quite readily? The modern "underclass" has probably only existed for at most, 100-200 years in various places. That's 3-10 generations with plenty of gene-movement in and out of the group in the meantime. It seems a bit more plausible to me to argue that humans already have a variety of strategies for reproduction and different circumstances bring out different strategies. My impression is that in peasant societies, teenage pregnancy is very common and families try to maximize the production of children. However, in hunter-gather societies, which pre-date peasant societies, my vague understanding that is teen-pregnancy is less common and there is less maximization of reproduction since population is often consciously consciously kept in the bounds of the land's productivity.

SandB0x 16y ago
> How much validity is there in positing the evolution of different contemporary human subgroups when these change at a fairly rapid rate and intermingle quite readily? The article doesn't suggest that subgroups have evolved, rather that we have evolved to produce offspring sooner and faster in response to harsh conditions. (So basically what you write in the rest of your post agrees with the article. I think!)
- sethg 16y ago
  Do we even need to hypothesize this as a specialized evolutionary response? “My life sucks; studying hard and looking for a job will not make it suck less, because even if I get good grades, nobody will hire me; however, if I have a baby, then there will at least be something cute in my immediate environment that loves me” looks like a straightforward chain of logical reasoning to me.
  - Unseelie 16y ago
    Snarky response is that we don't need hypothesises at all anymore, we understand enough of the universe to be rather ok. But there is value in accepting this theory, which I might add is reasonably well accepted as far as most other mammals. The value is that your chain of logic blames first the people themselves, and feeds back into the aticle's final justification, that is, while such things as increasing education are politically expedient, they don't actually change conditions. Getting this theory widely accepted can do a great deal for changing how governments fight the problems of poverty.
  - SandB0x 16y ago
    It's one factor - there are going to be a whole host of influences. But remember even cuteness is an evolutionary response. Nature selects for mothers who care for little things with wide eyes and big heads. If you're interested in evolutionary psychology and the nature-nurture debate I highly recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.
  - watmough 16y ago
    If there is a shortage of viable fathers in the local community, then having a baby will frequently lead to preferential financial and housing outcomes. More benefits, and a much better chance of getting social housing. There's very little way to get out of this cycle, besides either creating a lot of jobs, sufficient that men become useful, or simply increasing peoples' benefits such that strategies like having babies no longer get you a better outcome.
- cschwarm 16y ago
  > we have evolved to produce offspring sooner and faster in response to harsh conditions. One could also understand the article the other way around: We have evolved to reproduce in response to natural conditions, and one result is women being able to get pregnant at about 15. Now, why should something like this happen if the natural 'optimum' would be rather 20 or 25? Read this way, the fact that needs an explanation is women getting pregnant rather late.
notahacker 16y ago
They're surely positing an evolution of _behaviour_ rather than genetics. Either way they're approaching it from the wrong angle with the somewhat patronising "underclass" suggestions. A significant proportion of girls having children fairly young is the norm in the developing world and has been the norm in the West for a long time. It's the deliberate decisions of "upper classes" to defer conception/birth until long after becoming sexually active in order to prioritise other goals that's the [unnatural] development. And it's the middle class people opting to have their first children late after achieving their career goals who are the outliers.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

The article is seriously flawed, because it completely discounts the possibility that the fast lifestyle is the cause of the pathologies of the poor. It mentions the oft-cited statistic that 2000 calories of junk food is cheaper than 2000 calories of vegetables. The fact is true, but irrelevant; if you are overweight or obese (as most of the poor are), you can reduce your caloric intake and increase food quality for the same cost. A few of the poor may be working dangerous jobs, but the vast majority of the poor are simply not working. When you subject individuals from affluent (or poor, but foreign) backgrounds to US poverty-like conditions, they rarely exhibit the same pathologies. Graduate students earn very little money, but don't become obese. Indian immigrants in Jersey City, which includes guys working at fast food places, don't turn to crime, teen pregnancy [1] or exhibit the poor health that Americans do. That isn't what you'd expect if environment, rather than personal choices, were the driving factor. [1] They do reproduce fairly early, but this is caused by different pathologies (forcing girls into arranged marriages at an early age) and it occurs even among affluent Indians.

Unseelie 16y ago
You're discounting the argument that the fast lifestyle isn't a response to poverty, but a response to expectations of poverty. Environment as it affects someone born into poverty without examples of persons who grow out of it, rather than a grad student(really a laughable argument that a grad student is 'poor' considering the value of their education.) or an immigrant to the nation, come to find opportunity...
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  The theory that people respond to expected future "poverty" [1] rather than their current circumstances is certainly harder to falsify. But I definitely dispute the assertion that people living in poor regions lack examples of people who grew out of it. It's certainly not true in the poor neighborhoods I've lived in (and currently live in). There are plenty of people who stayed in school, kept their heads down and achieved a solidly middle class lifestyle. They often remain involved with the local community, typically the church and extended family. [1] I find it very difficult to use the term "poverty" to describe the bottom 10% of Americans, seeing as all their material needs are met and they consume more leisure than any other group.

brondaire 16y ago

Anytime an article hits Hacker News such as this; that is, with explicit references to class and socioeconomic status, I cringe as I read the comments. The comments are both predictable, and utterly devastating. Psychology is largely at play here, since both the Fundamental attribution error (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error) and cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance) have extremely strong effects. For the most part, the readership here often seems to be completely unaware of the daily realities of a very real underclass in western societies. Environment has a profound effect on our individual development. I've lived a privileged life. I have many close friends who were not so fortunate. I could not possibly imagine my life circumstances today if I had to face what some of my friends did.

todayiamme 16y ago
It's not their fault. Most people simply don't know what bottomless despair is like. Even fewer know what it's like to have no resources whatsoever to deal with it. I sometimes still cry and question why I wasn't born normal like others. It doesn't matter what I know and understand. It doesn't matter what I tell myself. I still feel that stab. I couldn't have imagined what this felt like until I had to go through it, and herein lies the problem. The people who often try to erase social injustices are those who have lived a life of privilege and have absolutely no idea what it's like on the other side. A lot of them rely on second or third hand sources, but they often fail to get the gist of things. This isn't something wrong on it's own, but whenever people are frustrated they tend to grope for explanations and a lot of people fail to give this any thought whatsoever. Even though this article seems to be well intentioned, but stuff like this hurts people in the longer run. Take a look at this; >>>It is not simply a case of teenage girls from deprived backgrounds accidentally becoming pregnant. Evidence from many sources suggests that teen pregnancy rates are similar in poor and affluent communities. However, motherhood is a choice, as both Geronimus and Johns are keen to point out. Teenage girls from affluent backgrounds are more likely to have abortions than their less-privileged peers. In terms of reproduction, the more affluent girls are best off concentrating on their own career and development so that they can invest more in the children they have at a later stage. "It seems that girls are assessing their life chances on a number of fronts and making conscious decisions about reproduction," says Johns.<<< The reason why they don't have pretty often is because they can't afford abortions. Even if there are clinics that perform this for an extremely low cost. Most people lack access and awareness in the ghetto, which is just another side effect of growing up there. Affluent children can think about their life choices because they have the luxury of doing so. Most children from the ghetto don't. The very idea that such behavior is driven by genetic impulses is something that shows a flawed understanding of the entire concept at some stage by the writer. I am not an expert on it, but Richard Dawkins surely is and he takes the pains to point out that genes are like a coder who writes a complex AI program. After her/his job is finished the program is on its own. If you think about it everything comes down to genetic impulses and the environment plays a crucial role in determining those impulses, but in humans another paradigm also comes into the equation; the ability for us to make a conscious choice. What I am trying to say is that the expert who wrote that paper is trying to get an extremely valuable point across, but the way it is used to explain everything is demeaning and flawed. There is no magic bullet for such problems, and you really need not resort to such things. Good ole' hard work with dedication and understanding ought to do. [edit: I forgot to add "flawed understanding by the writer" the expert who has been quoted is spot on, but the general conclusions derived seem to be pretty shabby.]

KingOfB 16y ago

The title to the article is a total troll. The real interesting factor is that an 'upper class' has evolved that reduces birth rates in exchange for power (education/money). The underclass has always been there. It might be interesting to compare growth rates of the two, but neither are a new thing.

greenlblue 16y ago

Not much new here but I'm always suspicious of anything with an 'evolutionary psychology approved' sticker. I know that the basis of the theory is that most behavior is a response to maximizing gene propagation but I haven't seen the theory used to rule out any behaviors. It basically justifies whatever is the status quo with what sounds like science because the initial hypothesis sounds reasonable and scientific.

davnola 16y ago
> I haven't seen the theory used to rule out any behaviors The article itself includes more than one example. E.g. the researchers hypothesized that, given some premises about evolution, poor women would have more kids earlier. This rules out them having fewer kids later. Then they went and tested it.
- Nwallins 16y ago
  > the researchers hypothesized that, given some premises about evolution, poor women would have more kids earlier. Um, isn't this already well known? Did they not craft the hypothesis to fit their existing understanding? > Then they went and tested it. No comment.
  - davnola 16y ago
    > Um, isn't this already well known? No idea. The point is that it's a substantive claim that could be tested empirically. > Did they not craft the hypothesis to fit their existing understanding? I hope so. Using what you already know helps generate interesting hypotheses. They don't pop into existence asexually.
- greenlblue 16y ago
  If evolutionary psychology explains why poor people act the way they do then it should be able to do the same for rich people as well. But I never see any papers or popular articles in evolutionary psychology explain why rich people have fewer kids. After all if people just want to propagate their genes and all our behaviors over the eons evolved for such a purpose then why do rich and educated people have fewer kids? It seems to contradict the basic premise of evolutionary psychology but no one seems to address this or just waves it away by saying "Oh, well humans are more complicated when it comes to learned behavior except of course when those people are poor in which case evolution and selfish genes rule". This double standard in an obviously symmetric situation is what makes me suspicious of evolutionary psychology. In fact it seems that according to evolutionary theory the rich would have a lot more kids since they have the resources to support those kids but that's not what happens.

dkarl 16y ago

The article seems to confirm the idea that we can't improve the life of the underclass, we can only shrink the underclass by moving people out of it. Unfortunately, not many people who are magically plucked out of their culture and society (via scholarships or employment) can bear to alienate themselves from their roots forever, so that isn't a solution, either. Even if we consistently skim off the exceptional individuals who are capable of handling that kind of dislocation, the underclass will sustain itself. Personally, I think the solution is to provide a minimum guaranteed standard of living, no questions asked, no silly ragged patchwork quilt of programs, just a minimum standard of living. Not enough to remove the stigma of poverty -- we don't want people to be comfortable or satisfied on the dole -- just enough to make it worthwhile for people to invest in themselves and avoid anti-social behavior. What we will then discover is whether an absolute level economic subsistence can transform behavior, or whether it is the stigma of relative poverty that causes people to behave antisocially.

runT1ME 16y ago
I agree with everything you say, but the problem is, what is the minimum standard without people being comfortable? Unfortunately, I know more than a couple in my family who despite having an iPhone and big screen TV, also have declared bankruptcy a few times, and will go on food stamps at times.
henrikschroder 16y ago
Belonging to the working class or underclass means not only that you lack the money and resources of the classes above you, it also means that you have a completely different outlook on life. What you suggest would take generations before you get any real results.
- yungchin 16y ago
  Yes, intuitively I'd also expect it to take many generations. But the article's examples - Sweden, Japan (both effects established post-WWII I suppose), the North Carolina district (1990s!) - surprisingly suggest otherwise.

aarp 16y ago

sometimes i cry when i think about poor people.

jgg 16y ago

This article reminds me of one of my "favorite" fallacies that people fall for: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Just-world_phenomenon https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Just-world_ph...

waratuman 16y ago

"There is no reason to view the poor as stupid or in any way different from anyone else, says Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle in the UK. All of us are simply human beings, making the best of the hand life has dealt us. If we understand this, it won't just change the way we view the lives of the poorest in society, it will also show how misguided many current efforts to tackle society's problems are - and it will suggest better solutions." I strongly disagree with this statement. This view means that humans are taking the passenger seat when they can in fact take control of their lives. If you live by the motto of "well this is what life gave me" you will never go anywhere.

ams6110 16y ago

Could it be as simple as, in most societies, if you are poor, the more kids you have, the more welfare you receive. Also if the father is not around, you are more likely to qualify for welfare. When you reward a behavior, people tend to do more of it.

c00p3r 16y ago

Wanna proof? Visit Russia (or any ex. East block country)! ^_^

earth 16y ago

I personally believe that your environment makes all the choices for you. If you were locked in a blank box from birth, what choices could or would you make? Poor people are not stupid and if you think that I guess I would label you stupid. Before you jump on your horse and say I would work hard and study hard to get out of a shit life, what do you even mean by that? You would be an entirely different person raised in those circumstances. Also some people make it out of the vicious cycle but I believe thats only luck based and they've just happened to meet some people who have said some useful things. The article itself doesn't really mean anything and I wouldn't say teenage pregnancy is related to evolution. In third world countries having more children is probably the best solution if you lack an education and survive off labour.

chopsueyar 16y ago

Am I the only one who read this and thought there is only one way to prove this? Find several thousand wealthy couples. Take away their wealth, reducing them to poverty. Watch them make babies. Evaluate empirical data. Maybe we should look at former and current US mortgage brokers over the past decade?

jdietrich 16y ago

I worked for two years as a welfare advisor in one of the poorest towns in the UK. What nobody ever thinks about in this debate is the economic incentives created by our welfare system. In that work, I spoke to numerous young women who were planning on getting pregnant in order to improve their income and get access to better housing. If you're poor, British and female, having a baby is a good career move. As soon as that child is born, your income effectively doubles. The state pays you more cash benefits, your allowance for rent payments increases significantly and you become eligible for an array of other benefits, starting with a £500 ($770) payment before the birth. You become "in priority need of housing" and therefore gain the legal right to accommodation, jumping the queue for social housing. Reproducing early may or may not be rational in Darwinian terms, but if you've just left school at sixteen with no qualifications and your community has 20% unemployment, it's certainly economically rational.