How much of what we do is in or genes? Our proclivity to spend rather than save? Our proclivity to commit heinous crimes? Why are poor women five times more likely to have a child out of wedlock than women who are not poor? And why aren’t children eating their school lunches? All this and more.
Michelle Obama School Lunch Update
If you want to know how students feel about their lunches these days, check out these photos tweeted under the hashtag #thanksmichelleobama. Former governor John Sununu writes:
“There is something amiss in Lunch Lady Land. Children are in revolt, school boards under fire. Even the School Nutrition Association is alarmed by the consequences of the first lady’s signature Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.”
Among other things, federal regulations put caps on calories, outlaw traditional flour-based pasta and limit the fat content of milk. No white bread, of course. But how about the kids? Aren’t they eating healthier lunches? Sununu writes:
“The unintended consequences of this unprecedented meddling would be laughable if it didn’t represent such a tragic waste of time and money. A government audit reveals that during the past two years, more than 1 million students have walked away from school lunch programs. More than 80 percent of schools report an increase in the amount of food waste, and school lunch administrators report a significant increase in costs.”
Is there a Savings Gene?
A study in the Journal of Political Economy compared the savings behavior of fraternal twins who share (on average) 50% of their DNA with identical twins who share 100%. They used the Swedish Twin Registry, which gives them data on roughly 15,000 twins, and linked that to the deep Swedish data on income, savings, employment, and other information.
Finding: roughly 1/3 of variation in savings behavior can be accounted for by genetics and the share attributed to common family experience is essentially zero.
Is there a Crime Gene?
Hat tip to Alex Tabarrok for pointing us to this study of the historical decline in the British homicides:
“At the beginning of [1500]… the English homicide rate was about 20 to 40 per year per 100,000 people. At the end [1750, AT], it was about 2 to 4 per 100,000, i.e., a 10-fold reduction (Eisner, 2001).”
The authors estimate that half the decline can be explained by capital punishment: executions that removed criminals from the gene pool.
Why Are The Women Who Can Least Afford Them Having Children?
New research from the Brookings Institution finds that among single women of child bearing age, there is virtually no difference in sexual activity across income groups. But women living below the poverty level are almost five times more likely to have a child than women whose incomes are 400 percent of the poverty level or higher.
Why is this happening? The authors speculate that poor women “have less to lose” by having a child and point to this NBER Working Paper, which concludes:
“Our reading of these seminal and influential works is that they find common ground in the notion that growing up in an environment where there is little chance of social and economic advancement leads young women to bear children outside of marriage. These women perceive that they have so little chance for success in life not solely because of their own disadvantage, but also because of the environment in which they live. They see no reason to postpone having a child and may even benefit from having one, regardless of marital status.”
Why Has Health Spending Slowed?
Federal spending on Obamacare subsidies will be 20 percent lower than expected over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The reduction is the result of two trends: slower-than-expected growth in health-care costs and lower-than-expected enrollment through Obamacare exchanges.
Why the slowdown in health care spending? The White House would have us believe that Obamacare has something to do with it. But Chris Conover produced this chart showing health care inflation minus general inflation:
Conover notes that:
“… a general downward trend in gradually diminishing “excess” medical inflation began well before President Obama’s arrival in the Oval Office. And since Obamacare was enacted, at best this metric has been flat. And at worst, one can detect a slight upward trend rather than a continuation of the downward trend that had been in place for at least a half decade [before] President Obama took office.”
