David Brooks treads into dangerous waters, suggesting that the results of government policy may be limited by things like behavior, heredity, and culture:
All we can say for sure is that different psychological, cultural and social factors combine in myriad ways to produce different viewpoints. As a result of these different viewpoints, the average behavior is different between different ethnic and geographic groups, leading to different life outcomes.
It is very hard for policy makers to use money to directly alter these viewpoints. In her book, “What Money Can’t Buy,†Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small. Doubling parental income would barely reduce dropout rates of the children. It would have a small effect on reducing teen pregnancy. It would barely improve child outcomes overall.
So when we’re arguing about politics, we should be aware of how policy fits into the larger scheme of cultural and social influences. Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.
An example of such a bad policy was AFDC. Originally intended as an aid program for widows and orphans, the rules of the program subsidized single parent households, particularly damaging in communities in which the traditional family structure was already under attack. In 1960 two thirds of African American children lived in two parent homes; by 1990 only a third did. I’m not claiming that AFDC caused this trend only that it contributed to the issues created by other societal problems.
That little may be accomplished from policy probably won’t deter those bound and determined to change the world via political policy. It accomplishes a lot for some people. For example, virtually all sociologists are employed either by the government at some level or in the largely government-subsidized education sector.
Update
As expected the complaints that Mr. Brooks is a racist have already begun to emerge:
Also too Bobo has a strange meandering column, which by my lights, is a dipping of the toes into racial supremacist waters.
It’s coming, folks. It won’t be long now until thoughtful, intellectually honest conservatives insist that we have a free-wheeling debate about some form of racial supremacism. Hear me now, believe me later.
I think that there are all sorts of things wrong with Brooks’s column. For example, I think the term “Asian American” is so general as to be useless. I refuse to combine Syrians, West Bengalese, and Han Chinese into a single aggregation (other than human, of course). The most important thing that immigrants from those three very different parts of the world have in common is that they’re here.
However, I think that the close correlation between the life expectancy of Swedes in Sweden with the life expectancy of Swedes in the United States is pretty remarkable.
What’s the average income of Swedes in the US? If they’re fairly well-off, then you’d be comparing well-off Swedish expatriates to the whole of Sweden, which includes both poor (by Swedish standards), wealthy, and middle-class Swedes.
I usually split the “Asian American” label into “South Asian”, “Central Asian”, and “East Asian” (West Asians usually come under the “Middle East” label). Even then, I usually prefer to avoid the term whenever possible, and just use “American of South/Central/East Asian descent” (in the same way that I’m an American of northern European descent).
To add –
That said, I do use terms like “white” and “black” in conversation as a short-hand (although I’ve heard “Euro-American” used on occasion).
Actually, I’m pretty sure over at Balloon Juice anyone they disagree with is considered racist, so I’m not sure Brooks is getting singled out for his actual opinions.