Megan McArdle on Bifurcated Family Patterns

She writes,

Could this be genetic? you ask. People who have impulse-control problems might be more likely to divorce and pass those traits on to their kids. Partially, sure. But two evidence points argue against genetic determinism. First, similar, although less severe, patterns show up in the case of kids who lose one parent, which is mostly not going to be due to homicide. And second, if this is genetic, how come it has changed over time? Have we all gotten genetically less able to stay out of jail or sustain a long-term marriage?

We know that children of single-parent households have worse outcomes than children of two-parent households. To simplify, let us say that there are favorable family patterns and unfavorable family patterns.

First question: how much of this is causal?

It could be that an inability to do well on the marshmallow test causes you to be less likely to raise children in a favorable family pattern and also more likely to pass on to your children genes that cause them to be unable to do well on the marshmallow test. That is how genetics could account for the relationship between family patterns and child outcomes.

Megan asks, what has changed over time? It could be two things. First, nowadays it may be that you have to be much better at the marshmallow test to sustain a favorable family pattern. Second, it may that we have gone through two or three generations of increasingly assortive mating.

Until 1965, a man who was in the top third on the marshmallow test might very well have been married to a woman in the bottom third, and conversely. For one thing, the top third and the bottom third were not that far apart. For another, the signals of being able to do well on the marshmallow test were not as clear (college education was too rare to be a reliable signal, particularly among women). Finally, men and women cared more about separate respective roles (breadwinner and homemaker) than about common abilities in the marshmallow test.

But in the 1960s that began to change. So you get one generation of assortive mating, and for the children of these marriages the difference between the top third and the bottom third on the marshmallow test starts to widen. Then they grow up, engage in assortive mating, have children, and difference widens once more. And so on.

But suppose we assume that there is a strong causal relationship between bad family patterns and bad outcomes. That leads to our

Second question: what can policy makers do to improve family patterns?

If anti-poverty programs are the solution, then why has the problem been getting worse? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (pointer from Mark Thoma) will tell you that anti-poverty programs are working to keep people out of poverty. So why are we not seeing more family stability? (Ross Douthat makes related points. Pointer from Tyler Cowen.)

Of course, there is a hypothesis, going back to Moynihan’s analysis, that anti-poverty programs are the problem, rather than the solution, because on the margin they reduce incentives to marry. I am skeptical about that, but as you know I am all for replacing current means-tested programs with a universal benefit that has a low implicit marginal tax rate. The idea is to reduce the adverse incentives that presently exist.

Megan, like Charles Murray, would like to see elites proclaim the benefits of good family patterns. I am skeptical of that, also.

My guess is that family patterns are not amenable to public policy interventions.

26 thoughts on “Megan McArdle on Bifurcated Family Patterns

  1. Megan, like Charles Murray, would like to see elites proclaim the benefits of good family patterns. I am skeptical of that, also.

    Megan suggested that Hollywood media do a better job at conveying this social ideal.

    Can you even imagine some middle aged stable father elite trying to “proclaim” social values to the dysfunctional underclass? The idea is absolutely absurd. The underclass often hate the elites, they live in different worlds, they don’t talk to each other, the elites fully know this, and stay away. I am glad Kling is skeptical.

    • I didn’t even want to make the comment there that it is quite likely that Hollywood has been actively doing the opposite for a near century.

  2. “My guess is that family patterns are not amenable to public policy interventions.”

    For all its other demerits, it seems to me that a mandatory public service program for all youth in America could have positive effects on family patterns. In particular, if the program lasts for several years, and they are randomly assigned to groups (rather than the groups matching the demographics of their source locale).

    It seems like that could have two positive effects: (i) reducing the likelihood of premature family formation, and (ii) a rub-off effect by putting at-risk youth into a social/work setting where they are away from other at-risk youth surrounded by non-at-risk youth.

  3. Simplify your ‘pass on genes’ argument. The fact of having ‘bad’ marsh. test results might make you more likely to pass on your genes, full stop. Your “more likely to pass on to your children genes that cause them to be unable to do well on the marshmallow test.” sounds confused (at best it’s verbose). You pass on all your genes (well, some random half of them) if you pass them on at all. It’s implied that if there’s any genetic cause to your poor marsh. trust/willpower/whatever that your spawn can also expect to have some of it too. The assortative mating argument is good and does strengthen the expected inheritance of those factors above half.

  4. More family instability is due to less moral regulation — the legacy of the 60s. Deregulation favors those who can best regulate themselves (whether for genetic reasons or otherwise). For the rest it’s a free for all, and they’re doing a bad job of it. Genetics hasn’t changed, but the cultural factors that were in place to check our worst genetic tendencies have changed quite a bit.

  5. “Of course, there is a hypothesis, going back to Moynihan’s analysis, that anti-poverty programs are the problem, rather than the solution, because on the margin they reduce incentives to marry.”

    But it’s not just that they reduce incentive to marry — single moms can survive without a dad (or without getting a job themselves). If you want a kid and have no way of supporting said kid — if you literally have to throw yourself at the mercy of the church or poor house and give up your kid for adoption because you are told you are not a fit mother for your child then don’t you think we’d see less single moms (and yes, perhaps more adult poverty…at least for a transition period)? What were single-mother birth rates during the Victorian era?

  6. I think the best we can hope for is to convince girls to delay childbearing until they have some idea that they have something to lose by having a child. The only problem is that we can only do this if we hold women and girls responsible for their choices, and we won’t. Thus a 15 year old girl can choose to have a child, collect food stamps and welfare, name the father, who despite being the same age or slightly older and equally without prospects will be harassed for child support and put in jail if he can’t pay up.

    Until we start telling the girl that it was her choice, that no, she won’t get special customized education designed for young mothers, that no, the school won’t arrange to provide daycare–and oh, by the way, pay young girls who don’t get pregnant–then I’m not sure there’s much we can do. I’m not sure that this will help, but it’s closer to what we had in earlier days.

    • Here is my issue. There is a biologically optimum age for childbearing. I don’t think it is when women (the ones whose offspring are positive externalities) are finishing their PhD or medical residency or doing the early career hours. I can tell you, this is not time to be chasing toddlers around as a father, either.

      Why isn’t child-rearing a good time to do education, especially with the new delivery technologies? The financing mechanisms and perverse incentives are a problem to be solved.

        • Age isn’t the economic issue really. Thus, I’m not referring to the hypothetical 15 y.o. In fact, I think the opportunity costs in the mid to late 20s and 30s are worse than the late teens.

          I’m not suggesting we subsidize young poor mothers. I am suggesting we are already subsidizing young poor mothers so we can penalize young middle class mothers.

          • Well, that’s fine, but it’s not what I was referring to, nor is it the topic of this post.

            Two entirely different issues: 1) educated women waiting until their 30s to have kids with a husband and a career; 2) uneducated high school graduates at best having kids without a job or a husband and being completely incapable of supporting the kids–and whether culture changed this behavior.

          • In short, those things are not totally separate in that the incentives they are presented today are probably perverse for both groups. Group 1 is artificially penalized and group 2 just doesn’t care. And then there are the people in between. It is difficult to get tough on them without collateral damage. But nevermind.

  7. education realist is my hero! He/she eloquently made the point I was trying to make — until we as a society are willing to be — harsh — with young, unwed, single moms, nothing will change.

  8. Marshmallows are now cheap and common and no reason to defer. We are better off reducing the consequences than resurrecting deprivation.

  9. Baumeister said men will do whatever their society requires them to do to get sex, and not a bit more. Dave Chappelle has made the same point, albeit more crudely. Certainly that is hardly the only male motivation; but it’s an important one that should never be ignored.

    So if men have to make themselves ‘marriageable’ in order to have access to sex – for whatever standard of ‘marriageable’ prevails in some society – then they will work almost however hard they need to in order to satisfy that standard.

    But a lot of men find they don’t have to make themselves marriageable to have sex these days, and good luck putting that genie back in the bottle in the short term.

    It’s clear that any resolution of this problem has to take the shape of creating as large and as salient a ‘utility’ gap in the consequences of decisions that lead to (A) a two-married-parents household on the one hand, and the single-mother household on the other, and (B) working hard to make oneself marriageable on the one hand, and living as a deadbeat cad on the other.

    (B) Requires a revolution (actually reactionary, counter-revolution) in sexual norms that, among other things, involves solving a massive coordination problem that enforces the rules on potential defectors.

    (A) Means ‘making work pay’ for a would-be dad, because the lifestyle gain for a potential single-mother of the addition of even a low-skill wage would be huge.

    The trouble is that one can’t have a massive improvement in lifestyle on a meager wage unless the circumstances absent that wage are truly penurious and destitute.

    But the state and the welfare system and liberal / progressive politics is constitutionally opposed to tolerating such a state of affairs, which functions like an enormous effective marginal rate of taxation on a man’s effort to make himself marriageable.

    If that isn’t going to change, then the only alternative is to give people huge subsidy payments – ahem – “means-tested refundable tax credits”, just for getting and staying married, which is obnoxiously intrusive and likely to yield all kinds of pernicious distortions.

    So, absent some kind of Great Awakening or mass conversion to Mormonism, the situation seems very unlikely to improve.

  10. A major factor in this is the decline of religion and in particular Christianity in the western world. Today, education, hospitals, and altruism are services run by the secular federal government and western Christian “religion” is just this pointless nonsense that is left over. Throughout much of history as recently as a generation ago, things like education, hospitals, and altruism were much more heavily driven and coordinated through institutions of religion. Religion had real practical purpose beyond the theological, and that institution was much more effective at shaping social attitudes on things such as family structure.

    If the institution of religion was able to shape and mold family norms, I don’t see why the institution of government can not.

    I’m disappointed no one else has brought up religion, which is so tightly linked to social norms and family patterns.

    • I’m always disappointed in people who are disappointed. Look at the sentence right above your post 😉

  11. One of the features of the Honduran LEAP Zone development we’ve been working on is a strictly private mutual aid society in lieu of welfare. In essence, permanent residents will be required to purchase social insurance upon residency that covers health care and costs of criminality. We are reaching out to both evangelical and Catholic organizations to seed these mutual aid societies for working class Honduran nationals. (Expats may purchase their own insurance or place a bond as a condition of entry).

    Insofar as certain behaviors are much more costly to insure than others, we expect that in an open insurance market those who exhibit such behaviors will pay both higher rates and experience social stigma. Starting from a more traditionally religious culture helps. It will also be helpful that, among the Hondurans, we will start with only working class people with jobs who are grateful to obtain the considerable benefits of living in the zone – higher wages, greater safety, higher quality services, etc. We thus intend to start with a relatively motivated and healthy population.

    Over time we anticipate that secular mutual aid societies will also arise. It will be interesting to see what repertoire of techniques a modern secular mutual aid society might rely on, such detailed technological monitoring in exchange for lower rates. (Auto insurers in the US already offer lower rates in exchange for monitoring your driving). In a jurisdiction without regulatory obstacles and in which voluntary contracts are not invalidated by the courts one can imagine sophisticated markets developing to identify and monitor traits that lead to costly behaviors. Over time, as such markets come to serve large populations, pricing of insurance contracts will provide much better information on the links between behaviors and outcomes than contemporary social science is able to provide.

    There are many details involved in getting from here to there (interested readers may contact me to learn of an early version of the plan). Whether or not this first version is successful, the expansion of these zones around the world seems likely, and each one is a new opportunity to develop private, entrepreneurial systems that internalize the costs of attitudes and behaviors so that members of those communities have an incentive to develop systems (social, moral, cultural, technological) needed to reduce the long-term costs associated with harmful behaviors.

    Meanwhile, as the cultural capital that provided the foundation for personal responsibility continues to erode in the welfare states, thereby accelerating and deepening fiscal crises, these new experiments in privately-managed communal responsibility will become increasingly compelling. This process may take more decades rather than fewer, but eventually those better technologies (social, legal, electronic, biological, etc.) deployed by entrepreneurial visionaries will win out.

    • Very interesting. Applying this kind of private insurance thinking along with Arnold’s Universal Benefit to the problem of young unwed mothers might look like this: a deferred transferable savings account. Anyone could donate to a girl’s account much like education savings accounts. I could imagine funding pledge drives and car washes that serve to build this nest egg. Every year she remains unpregnant she gets to use a portion of the money for whatever she wants or can choose an incentive to roll it along with the unvested portion into a deferred education or childcare savings plan. If she gets pregnant, she loses a portion of the money and that year’s bonus (the first disincentive) the rest must be used for the child (the second disincentive). The trick will be in making sure the disincentives outweigh the reassurance that there is some money for taking care of the child. The costs should also be commensurate with the actual positive externalities of postponing pregnancy (to the child and society) and the negatives externalities of young unwed motherhood.

  12. It isn’t the end of the world to have kids young and single. It is a marginal negative externality. However, what do the economists call it, time inconsistency? Sex is so good up front because babies are such a huge pain in the rear. What is the actual externality cost and are there any incentives that work at low cost. My guess is we are already overpaying for ineffective (if not perverse) incentives. One idea would be to legalize and tax break adolescent work in childcare (another being the care for the baby doll school programs). If that doesn’t work as effective birth control, then at least it might work as childcare training. The hypothesis must be tested and the conditions tweaked until an effective and cost effective deterrent is discovered.

  13. “Second question: what can policy makers do to improve family patterns?”

    “Policy Makers.” Who dey is? What information do they have? Where do they get it? How do they do the “making?”

    Are they academically certified; pasteurized & pure of heart; without preconceptions from their own conditions and experiences?

    Given the probable answers to those queries (and others); what they can do to “improve” is to STOP intervening; stop intermediating; go to the Bayan trees and navel-gaze.

  14. Combine this with TAASTAAFM and you have put up two extraordinarily good posts in two days.

  15. One aspect not discussed between 1960 and today is how much later marriages occur today. Researches have found married couples improve their marriage success a lot marrying after 23. (My guess the optimal marriage age is later but the data is noisy.)

    1) The divorce rate has dropped from 50% to 40% the last 35 years so people are making better decisions on marriage than they did in 1960.
    2) Decades ago it was the college educated couples who were getting the divorces not the working class. So the model of 1960 – 1970 might have been as strong for all this single income or class cross marriages.
    3) Lastly, we assume the marriages in 1960 were always by rational choice. There were still a lot shotgun marriages at the time.

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