NY Times says black people genetically programmed to be poor

In the most politically incorrect article printed in the NY Times in decades, reporter Nicholas Wade explains the thesis of economic historian Gregory Clark's book A Farewell to Alms.

Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California, Davis, believes that the Industrial Revolution — the surge in economic growth that occurred first in England around 1800 — occurred because of a change in the nature of the human population. The change was one in which people gradually developed the strange new behaviors required to make a modern economy work. The middle-class values of nonviolence, literacy, long working hours and a willingness to save emerged only recently in human history, Dr. Clark argues.

The most important part of the thesis is Clark's research which showed that rich people had more surviving children than poor people:

In support of the disease-resistance idea, cities like London were so filthy and disease ridden that a third of their populations died off every generation, and the losses were restored by immigrants from the countryside. That suggested to Dr. Clark that the surviving population of England might be the descendants of peasants.

A way to test the idea, he realized, was through analysis of ancient wills, which might reveal a connection between wealth and the number of progeny. The wills did that, , but in quite the opposite direction to what he had expected.

Generation after generation, the rich had more surviving children than the poor, his research showed. That meant there must have been constant downward social mobility as the poor failed to reproduce themselves and the progeny of the rich took over their occupations. “The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.

If you are thinking that Dr. Clark might be too politically correct to see the genetic implications, fortunately you are thinking wrongly:

Dr. Clark says the middle-class values needed for productivity could have been transmitted either culturally or genetically. But in some passages, he seems to lean toward evolution as the explanation. “Through the long agrarian passage leading up to the Industrial Revolution, man was becoming biologically more adapted to the modern economic world,” he writes. And, “The triumph of capitalism in the modern world thus may lie as much in our genes as in ideology or rationality.”

Reading between the lines of the thesis, we learn that people who never moved beyond the stage of hunter-gatherer economies never evolved enough to support modern industrial economies. This explains why black Africa is unable to move into the modern world. It's because black Africa never moved into the agrarian world. This explains why black people in the United States are so much more violent than white people. Non-violence was one of the key features passed on by the upper class. It also explains why black people have such poor future time orientation. Future time orientation is another one of Dr. Clark's key behaviors.

One can make a case that non-violence and future time orientation are behaviors separate from intelligence, although I'm not entirely convinced because future time orientation seems to be strongly linked to intelligence. But there's no denying that literacy is a direct consequence of high intelligence. Dr. Clark's politically correct protestations to the contrary, the evolution of higher IQ is a key contributing factor to the modern economy.

Dr. Clark's research also explains the paradox of how the population grew smarter despite my own finding that smarter people have fewer children and lower sex drive. I previously theorized that "before the safety nets and advanced healthcare of modern civilization, the less intelligent and their children had a greater chance of dying. War, famine, disease, and accidents killed a greater share of the less intelligent, more than making up for their greater fertility." Dr. Clark's research has proved my theory.

Dr. Clark does not adequately explain thy the industrial revolution happened first in the West and not in the East. East Asians are more evolved than Whites when it comes to non-violence and future time orientation. In any event, Japan had no problem joining the industrial age when shown the way. The rest of Asia is still behind Japan, but they seem to be catching up pretty fast.

Comments

[Peter]

So. Anyone want to place bets on how long it'll be until Clark gets fired? My guess is that he'll be gone by Labor Day.

[Buckaroo]

This theory dovetails reasonably well with the hypotheses on how European Jews developed their superior intelligence. I don't expect the two subjects to be discussed on the same page, though, because it would probably self-combust from all the inflammatory political incorrectness on it.

There is at least one thing that bothers me though. If the Europeans got to be so smart, how come they came up with and then pursued (and in some respects continue to pursue) crackpot social systems such as communism and socialism ? Come to think of it, Jews (or at least Jewish intellectuals) were pretty big fans of this too, starting with, say, Marx himself. Similarly, the East Asians, despite their bourgeoisie values and big brains leapt on the Stalinist bandwagon with a vengeance. I suppose Japan is an exception but then that country seems to be sui generis by design.

[Dragon Horse]

The title is hyperbole, most black people in America are not poor. Most are middle class.

ABOUT BLACK AMERICANS - INCOME
2004 and 2007 University of Georgia Selig Center study, U.S. Census Bureau, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Target Market News, 2004 NUL "State of Black America" Report
74% live above the poverty line (vs. 10% in 1940 and 45% in 1960). All-time high above poverty: 79% in 2001
5% rich, 44% middle class, 27% working class, 24% poor (2004)
Overall median household income: $$37,000 (2000). Median income for married households: $48,000 (2002)
Top 5 states with highest median black household income: New Hampshire $43,574, Alaska $42,887, Maryland $41,652, Hawaii $41,032, New Jersey $38,513
Married households: 50% earn $50,000+. 27% earn $75,000+
Overall households: 33% earn $50,000+. 16% earn $75,000+
Median black adult male income (2000): $30,409. Median black adult female income (2000): $25,117
Poverty rate by family composition: married-couple families 8%, single-dad families 19%, single-mom families 35%

[Peter]

There is at least one thing that bothers me though. If the Europeans got to be so smart, how come they came up with and then pursued (and in some respects continue to pursue) crackpot social systems such as communism and socialism ? Come to think of it, Jews (or at least Jewish intellectuals) were pretty big fans of this too, starting with, say, Marx himself. Similarly, the East Asians, despite their bourgeoisie values and big brains leapt on the Stalinist bandwagon with a vengeance.

It might take a fair degree of intelligence to come up with crackpot social systems :)

[Dragon Horse]

The article also states:

It is puzzling that the Industrial Revolution did not occur first in the much larger populations of China or Japan. Dr. Clark has found data showing that their richer classes, the Samurai in Japan and the Qing dynasty in China, were surprisingly unfertile and so would have failed to generate the downward social mobility that spread production-oriented values in England.

That's funny because the IMF and the World Bank consider Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan as developed nations but they did not show the type of demographic shift that was present in the UK, but industrialized faster than most of Europe once exposed to industrialization and Japan is wealthier per capita and definitely gross GDP (second only to the U.S.) than most countries in Europe.

Hmmm...seems to be some holes in his theory...which the article talks about in detail.

He does not mention any population of black people at all or much outside of the UK for that matter, not even Eastern Europeans (who industrialized slower than Japan and in some cases later).

Sounds like sigma is once again jumping the gun so he can claim some people are genetically lower class as race and class seem to be a personal obsession.

[GIl]

Your point being HS? Base society's norms on ruthless laissez-faire? The notion that welfare encourages crud into the human gene pool by hindering the productive to help the unproductive is ho-hum Social Darwinism. I'm sure many a biologist would say something similar about raising young animals that were rejected by their parents/herd. Futhermore proof is the way selective breeding of birds, animals and plants leads to strange and exotic creations whereas the natural species are relatively homogenous. Likewise, to say we are all the descendants of the most productive farmers, hunters, gatherers, thieves and conquerors makes me think, "well DUUUUUUUUUHHHHH!!". Sterility is an inherited condition? nyuk nyuk nyuk :\

Yet how can you necessarily say that some groups of humans are necessarily more evolved or advanced than another? Maybe people were hunters and gatherers for a long times was because it worked rather well. Others were farmers because farming was more sustainable for them than hunting/gathering. Likewise what of the environment in which people lived? How is a small island population going to become a technological advanced society? Another author pointed out to blame the monotonous history of the Australian Aboriginals is to ignore that the European settlers had to import all the farming plants and animals. Or for that matter that modern civilization is going to wonderfully last? Hunter/gatherers might seem to live a boringly ho-hum existence but then again we know they could continue to live that way for thousands and thousands of years whereas civilisations tend to come and go like meteors. But now I think I'm starting to ramble . . .

[mondo]

A way to test the idea, he realized, was through analysis of ancient wills, which might reveal a connection between wealth and the number of progeny. The wills did that, , but in quite the opposite direction to what he had expected.

“The modern population of the English is largely descended from the economic upper classes of the Middle Ages,” he concluded.

The rich would more likely have wills than the property-less poor, so his evidence would be highly biased and present a skewed picture of the past.

[Rohan Swee]

There is at least one thing that bothers me though. If the Europeans got to be so smart, how come they came up with and then pursued (and in some respects continue to pursue) crackpot social systems such as communism and socialism?

Maybe belief in the workability of communism is just a pathological form of the capacity for non-kin cooperation.

[Half Sigma]

Theoretical political frameworks, whether they work or not, are of interest only to those with high IQ.

[GOP Lurker]

The article specifically mentions that the traits thought to be selected (docility for one), are not necessarily linked to intelligence. The wage laborer's job is no more brain-intensive than a farmer's.

Were cities in the early industrial age any more "civilized" than ancient cities? Rome, Athens? (Not military conquest, but day-to-day life in the city.) I think it's more likely to assume that as scarcity decreases docility and other factors increase. A virtuous circle. People get pissed off and irrational when they are hungry, even rich capitalists.

[lpsph]

Literacy is a cultural value having little to do with intrinsic intelligence. Dr. Clark's thesis is borne out in the fact that poor immigrants from Asian countries, nevertheless, enforce study amongst their first generation children. I should know, I'm one of those.

[Buckaroo]

Literacy is a cultural value having little to do with intrinsic intelligence

This is just silly PC boilerplate. Literacy, at least in the narrow sense of being able to read, refers to the mastery of an abstract speech encoding system. A technology, if you will. Now, the intelligence level required to achieve reasonable proficiency may not be that high but it should be obvious that it isn't irrelevant. In particular, the ease or difficulty with which the technology will be mastered will correlate with intelligence. This, in turn, will either encourage or discourage people from putting in the effort. I certianly don't claim that parental and environmental pressure won't have an effect. But for inherently smart people (e.g. Far Easterners) less external prodding will be needed.

[dearieme]

"black Africa never moved into the agrarian world": in what sense?

[tvoh]

Adam Smith noted that the rich had few kids but they lived. The poor had many, but few made it. He spoke of a British Army recruiter noting the hordes of children in soldier families, but when they should have grown, there were not enough even for a color party.

Thanks to Western progress, the poor have had better health care and live, ergo they are prey for the crackpot social theories.

[Lancaster]

Actually, Clark's analysis vis-à-vis the samurai holds up when factors other than fecundity are considered. The samurai comprised an unusually large (for an aristocracy) 8-10 percent of the population, and strict sumptuary laws left lower-class samurai with no good economic options except to push down into the merchant, artisan, and farming classes. Wealthy merchants and artisans in turn reached up through adoption and marriage. With no wars to fight during the Tokugawa Era, many samurai turned to academics, resulting in a large literate population. When the feudal class system was abolished after the Meiji Restoration, the well-connected merchants and the educated and politically powerful middle-to-upper class samurai were ideally positioned to take advantage of the new order.

[Axolotl]

Yet how can you necessarily say that some groups of humans are necessarily more evolved or advanced than another? Maybe people were hunters and gatherers for a long times was because it worked rather well. Others were farmers because farming was more sustainable for them than hunting/gathering. Likewise what of the environment in which people lived? How is a small island population going to become a technological advanced society? Another author pointed out to blame the monotonous history of the Australian Aboriginals is to ignore that the European settlers had to import all the farming plants and animals. Or for that matter that modern civilization is going to wonderfully last?

I don't see how any of this contradicts the thesis of the book. It didn't say that hunter-gathers shouldn't survive in an environment that favors them - it just says their survival doesn't require the traits that bring about modern Western society. To survive as a farmer requires more productivity, more time- awareness, and other things. If you don't have them, you die. Therefore, the survivors have them, and the traits that bring about Modern society are favored. Hunter gatherers exist elsewhere, but their society never changes. Islanders live on their islands, but they never develop modern technology. They couldn't, so they didn't. The thesis here explains why English speakers could and did, and the environment that let them. It also doesn't say whether it will last.

[Marc]

Axolotl,

I believe the comment you are responding to was taking issue with Sigma's description of whites and Asians as "more evolved" than blacks. Even if you are sympathetic to the idea of human genetic biodiversity, I don't think it's justified to say that one race is more evolved than another. A better way of putting it would be that evolution may have resulted in certain groups being better matched to our current, industrialized envirnoment than others.

[pjgoober]

mondo writes: "The rich would more likely have wills than the property-less poor, so his evidence would be highly biased and present a skewed picture of the past."

For that to highly bias the evidence unfairly in the books favor, the poor people that *did* leave wills would have to have much less surviving children than the poor people that did not leave wills. If anything, it seems like the opposite would be more likely to occur (I would think that more surviving children makes you more likely to write a will, not less).

[Marc]

Axolotl,

I believe the comment you are responding to was taking issue with Sigma's description of whites and Asians as "more evolved" than blacks. Even if you are sympathetic to the idea of human genetic biodiversity, I don't think it's justified to say that one race is more evolved than another. A better way of putting it would be that evolution may have resulted in certain groups being better matched to our current, industrialized envirnoment than others.

[Rain And]

I wonder how far Gregory Clark's views on genetic differences really go. A recent op-ed in the LA Times shows he is in favor of illegal immigration:

"So a little live-and-let-live when it comes to immigration is not just prudent, it is also compassionate."

Perhaps inconsistent with beliefs in large differences. Then again Brian Caplan of EconLog seems to believe in race differences while also being gung-ho about low IQ immigration. Being a pure Randian I suppose he's comfortable with believing in both extreme natural inequality and no borders.

[Axolotl]

Marc,

Thanks for pointing that out. Actually, saying anything is generally "more evolved" is bad terminology and a misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

[Half Sigma]

"Evolved" is what separates humans from the beasts of the field.

The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is the least evolved, because it's little different than what the animals do.

[John]

You've got to admit that the NYT article doesn't even imply anything remotely of the sort.

[Half Sigma]

John: "You've got to admit that the NYT article doesn't even imply anything remotely of the sort."

It's true that the NY Times doesn't spell out the very obvious implications of Clark's hypothesis.

[Axolotl]

Half Sigma,

If that's the distinction you are trying to make, then you say "most divergent" or exhibiting the greatest number of apomorphies.

[Anon]

This pedantic discussion about the meaning of "evolved" is obfuscating the very obvious point HS made at 10:43. We all know what he means by "more evolved" -- even if it's not academically correct -- i.e. more genetically predisposed to socially useful behaviors in a post-agrarian (or, for that matter, agrarian) society. "More divergent" gets in the way of the thrust of HS's statement in an almost doublespeakishly opaque way.
Perhaps commenters also want to take issue with the concept of some behaviors being socially useful, but we all know what is being discussed.

[David Alexander]

HS, please stop beating around the bush with your faux-politically correct title, and just admit that you think black people are inferior to whites and Asians.

[DML]

"What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence — being a hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer."

I think I almost read that we've been naturally selected to become a bunch of dumb, docile sheep. That can't be right...

[Rain And]

HS, please stop beating around the bush with your faux-politically correct title, and just admit that you think black people are inferior to whites and Asians.

Maybe not:

"I don't want this to turn into a "my race is better than your race" debate.

And it would just make me feel inferior, because everyone knows that in things that are valued in society, like being good at sports and having sex, blacks are superior to whites."

[skippy]

The irregular shall inherit the earth: I thought it was strange that scientists think that evolution is slow. All of my friends with more than one child have irregular periods and/or multiple ovulations and also share a dislike of the side effects of the pill. They are also earthy women.
And the über-religious have way more children than atheists.
So...there will be marked changes in the population every generation towards people with a need for the structure of über-religion and the irregular.
How will that effect the economy?
skippy

[cuchulkhan]

HS

Russia currently has a similar crime rate etc to that of black America, yet they averaged well into the nineties in IQ and the Wealth of Nations. Not sure how the fact that over 95% of Russians were slaves until the mid-nineteenth century played with their genes, but it'd be interesting to explore. Anyway, Russia shows that whites can be just as violent as blacks.

[Rain And]

Norms of reaction, cuchulkhan.

[DML]

Rain And:

Please explain "Norms of reaction". In your own words, mind you. And in your own words, overlay that with what HS posted.

This should be...amusing. :)

[Gil]

Or alternatively as been implied by this article - should there be no charity or welfare? Or should anyone who has been down and out such that they are willing to accept charity/welfare submit to being sterilized? 'Twas interesting to hear how Conservatives and Libertarians like to say they'd like to see charity replace welfare. Yet to the recipient it's still something for nothing, taxpayer funded or not. 'Twas even more interesting to see one Libertarian with a disdain for charity for the above reason.