I am nervous about the long-term future of the human race

[KrazyHorse]

I imagine the driving force behind marriage were the parents, and parents typically employ(ed) a merit system when deciding on spouses for their children

The merits were different. For women, it was much more about fertility. For both men and women it was about family, because being smart didn't get you very far in the middle ages.

[RGBVideo]

Postulates/observations:
3) Sexual equality will continue to increase

How so? Relative to world population, we've been on an increasingly steep downhill since ca 1990.

[Berzerker]

I imagine the driving force behind marriage were the parents, and parents typically employ(ed) a merit system when deciding on spouses for their children

The merits were different. For women, it was much more about fertility. For both men and women it was about family, because being smart didn't get you very far in the middle ages.

Smarts has always been a major factor for parents looking for spouses for their kids. I suspect even moreso than the kids they were setting up for marriage.

[aneeshm]

This is the point; it may be a pure meritocracy which is nonetheless (as you measure intergenerational mobility) virtually fossilized.

And why is this a problem?

[KrazyHorse]

And why is this a problem?

I think it will lead to social breakdowns as poor people lose hope that their children will do better than them while rich people do their best to evaporate the social safety net.

[aneeshm]

I think it will lead to social breakdowns as poor people lose hope that their children will do better than them while rich people do their best to evaporate the social safety net.

Interesting.

Would a system where an illusory hope of advancement keeps the poor pacified be more stable? And, more controversially, desirable?

Also, how do you see the breakdown happening? And if such breakdown did occur, what do you think would come after?

[KrazyHorse]

Would a system where an illusory hope of advancement keeps the poor pacified be more stable? And, more controversially, desirable?

I think it's partially what we have now.

[Jon Miller]

While I agree that there are significant roadblocks (often put in place by the poor themselves), I would argue that it is even more common for children of poor parents (bottom 25%) to make it to the top 25% then ever before. I admit that I don't have strong statistics. And a fair number make it to the top 10%

Even people born to parents in the top 25% don't have a guarantee to make it to the top 10%.

Now I will agree with you if you redefine the goal like from 150k combined salary to being truly rich with wealth in excess of 5m (before you are ancient, to decrease arguments I will say before you are 60). I will agree that it is very hard for anyone not born in the top 10% to make it there. But wealth like that is the top 2%?

JM

[KrazyHorse]

There is evidence that intergenerational mobility is higher now than in the 19th century. There is no real evidence that it has increased since the first half of the 20th century to today (you will, of course, note the significant time lag before you can make reasonable measurements on the lifetime income of children being born today).

My worry is that intergenerational mobility underwent a significant increase, while it is now about to enter a period of decline.

[DaShi]

There's a lot of hokey stuff here so I skimmed it. However, maybe this article applies to something here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16kristof.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

How to Raise Our I.Q.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Poor people have I.Q.’s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics.

After all, a series of studies seemed to indicate that I.Q. is largely inherited. Identical twins raised apart, for example, have I.Q.’s that are remarkably similar. They are even closer on average than those of fraternal twins who grow up together.

If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong. Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has just demolished this view in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” which also offers terrific advice for addressing poverty and inequality in America.

Professor Nisbett provides suggestions for transforming your own urchins into geniuses — praise effort more than achievement, teach delayed gratification, limit reprimands and use praise to stimulate curiosity — but focuses on how to raise America’s collective I.Q. That’s important, because while I.Q. doesn’t measure pure intellect — we’re not certain exactly what it does measure — differences do matter, and a higher I.Q. correlates to greater success in life.

Intelligence does seem to be highly inherited in middle-class households, and that’s the reason for the findings of the twins studies: very few impoverished kids were included in those studies. But Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia has conducted further research demonstrating that in poor and chaotic households, I.Q. is minimally the result of genetics — because everybody is held back.

“Bad environments suppress children’s I.Q.’s,” Professor Turkheimer said.

One gauge of that is that when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study. For example, a French study showed that children from poor households adopted into upper-middle-class homes averaged an I.Q. of 107 by one test and 111 by another. Their siblings who were not adopted averaged 95 on both tests.

Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time. Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.

Good schooling correlates particularly closely to higher I.Q.’s. One indication of the importance of school is that children’s I.Q.’s drop or stagnate over the summer months when they are on vacation (particularly for kids whose parents don’t inflict books or summer programs on them).

Professor Nisbett strongly advocates intensive early childhood education because of its proven ability to raise I.Q. and improve long-term outcomes. The Milwaukee Project, for example, took African-American children considered at risk for mental retardation and assigned them randomly either to a control group that received no help or to a group that enjoyed intensive day care and education from 6 months of age until they left to enter first grade.

By age 5, the children in the program averaged an I.Q. of 110, compared with 83 for children in the control group. Even years later in adolescence, those children were still 10 points ahead in I.Q.

Professor Nisbett suggests putting less money into Head Start, which has a mixed record, and more into these intensive childhood programs. He also notes that schools in the Knowledge Is Power Program (better known as KIPP) have tested exceptionally well and favors experiments to see if they can be scaled up.

Another proven intervention is to tell junior-high-school students that I.Q. is expandable, and that their intelligence is something they can help shape. Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades. That’s particularly true of girls and math, apparently because some girls assume that they are genetically disadvantaged at numbers; deprived of an excuse for failure, they excel.

“Some of the things that work are very cheap,” Professor Nisbett noted. “Convincing junior-high kids that intelligence is under their control — you could argue that that should be in the junior-high curriculum right now.”

The implication of this new research on intelligence is that the economic-stimulus package should also be an intellectual-stimulus program. By my calculation, if we were to push early childhood education and bolster schools in poor neighborhoods, we just might be able to raise the United States collective I.Q. by as much as one billion points.

That should be a no-brainer.

[SlowwHand]

I don't know why you people are nervous. Nervous entails an unknown, to me. It's quite clear that the majority of you are going to burn in Hell for all of eternity, certainly.
So relax. All is well.

[TCO]

Kitty, the avatar is distracting. It draws my eye too much on the page. Must be some genetic thing of reacting to bears eating people.

[KrazyHorse]

Good.

[DanS]

Some trends that I have noticed. I'm only looking at the US because I live here. But maybe other countries have similar dynamics.

(1) The percentage of people attending college has leveled off in the US. It's still much higher than in most non-Anglophone countries, of course.

(2) Older people are attending college (nights, weekends, etc.). Timewise, it has never been easier to attain education.

(3) Some charter schools are having very good success at preparing the urban impoverished for college and placing them in slots. In DC, in two years, the number of charter school students will exceed the number of public school students. Of course, there are more poor people in rural areas than in urban areas, but this change seems significant to me.