2016-18 GSS data: Atheism and agnosticism are dysgenic

 Using 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) data, I looked at the relationship between confidence in the existence of God and IQ as measured by a vocabulary quiz:

The IQ average for atheists is over 6 points higher than the mean for those who know God exists.  Agnostics, in fact, have the highest average with 103.9. 

Now let's look at fertility by confidence in God for those who are old enough to have completed their family size but are not so old they're really from another generation. Let's choose 45 to 64:

We see that atheists average 1.2 children, while the mean for those who know God exists is 2.1. So believers have families that are 1.8 times bigger than those of atheists.  The believer/agnostic difference is similar.  

We know that general intelligence is highly heritable, so smart people tend to have smart kids. Atheists and agnostics have fewer kids, so, at least under current conditions, skepticism is dysgenic. 

GSS data: Never-married men are _not_ wealthier than divorced men

In response to my claim that married people are, on average, wealthier than people in other marital statuses, a commenter on Twitter suggested that this kind of finding ignores the loss of wealth due to divorce, so it is not worth it to get married. The implication is that people who never marry should be wealthier than divorced people. Of course, we would need to adjust for age since wealth tends to grow as one gets older. 

I did this using General Social Survey (GSS) data. Respondents were asked their wealth on a 15 category scale that went from less than $5,000 to more than $15 million. This first model is for men (n = 1,689):

 

Divorced people are the reference category: all other marital statuses are compared with them.  We can see that never-married men do not more have more wealth than divorced men. The sign indicates that the divorced have more wealth, but the relationship is not statistically significant. The only group that is significantly wealthier than divorced men is the married group. 

And for women (n = 1,769)?

Never-married women do not differ significantly from divorced women in wealth. Widowed and separated women are poorer than divorced women. Married women are the only group that are significantly wealthier. 

Bottom line: marriage is a good place to be. 

New study finds that black Americans are 18% white, but the number varies by city

 

A small percent of whites have an allele that is associated with hemochromatosis--a hereditary disorder in which iron salts are deposited in the tissues, leading to liver damage, diabetes mellitus, and bronze discoloration of the skin.  This polymorphism is completely absent in West African blacks.  This is the kind of difference race deniers tell us doesn't happen. 

In this new study, researchers estimated the European ancestry of African Americans using the frequency of this hemochromatosis allele. 

They found that, indeed, the frequency of the allele is 0.00000 in people from the Gambia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. The frequency in white Americans was 0.060-0.067. For all black Americans it was 0.012.

The average white ancestry for black Americans was 0.180 for the whole sample, but it differed by city:

Proportion white ancestry

Rochester, NY   0.132

Birmingham, AL   0.146

Upper Savannah Region, SC   0.157

Portland, OR   0.161

San Diego, CA   0.175

Hartford, CT  0.178

District of Columbia   0.196

Oakland, CA   0.238

Irvine, CA   0.243

The proportion white of blacks living in Irvine is 1.8 times higher than for those living in Rochester, NY, so the variation is noteworthy. I don't see a clear regional pattern here. 

The authors report that their findings are consistent with studies using other methods. They also found both paternal and maternal contributions of white American ancestry in black Americans.

GSS data: Trump-voting women are happier and here's why

Feminism is a form of liberation that should make you happy, right? Wrong. Here is the relationship among white women between being happy and voting for Hillary in 2016 (GSS data):

Women who voted for Trump are significantly more likely to be very happy. Marriage is probably the reason why: married white women tend to vote Republican, and married women are happier. Look:

Gloria Steinem famously said, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." A fish doesn't need a bicycle unless she likes being happy. 

Data: Religiosity and corruption

This interesting new study of between 76 and 179 countries (it varies by the model estimated) finds that more religious countries are more corrupt. I'm skeptical of their interpretation. They admit the finding is counterintuitive but claim that either religion is the "opiate of the people" so they don't care and are oblivious to corruption, or the corruption drives them to escape in religion (the latter seems more likely). I suspect that race/ethnicity is driving the correlation. For example, Scandinavian people are less religious and less corrupt, while Latin Americans tend to be the opposite. Plus, it's always dicey to draw conclusions about individuals from aggregate-level data.

Let's use individual-level data from the General Social Survey. We'll narrow the ethnic variation by keep the sample large by focusing on whites. Here are the results:

People who attend religious services are clearly more likely to think that cheating on one's taxes is wrong. The correlation (not shown) is .18. Now, this is an attitude question about one kind of illegal behavior, and it's not about behavior itself, but it still supports the view that religious people are not more corrupt than the non-religious.

Meta-analysis of nine studies (N = 2,339 cases, 5,252 controls) finds that religiosity is associated with less completed suicide

From PLOS ONE:

Introduction
Suicide is a major public health concern and a leading cause of death around the world. How religion influences the risk of completed suicide in different settings across the world requires clarification in order to best inform suicide prevention strategies.

Methods
A meta-analysis using search results from Pubmed and Web of Science databases was conducted following PRISMA protocol and using the keywords “religion” or “religious” or “religiosity” or “spiritual” or “spirituality” plus “suicide” or “suicidality” or “suicide attempt”. Random and fixed effects models were used to generate pooled ORs and I2 values. Sub-analyses were conducted among the following categories: young age (under 45yo), older age (45 or older), western culture, eastern culture, and religious homogeneity.

Results
Nine studies that altogether evaluated 2339 suicide cases and 5252 comparison participants met all selection criteria and were included in the meta-analysis. The meta-analysis suggested an overall protective effect of religiosity from completed suicide with a pooled OR of 0.38 (95% CI: 0.21–0.71) and I2 of 91%. Sub-analyses similarly revealed significant protective effects for studies performed in western cultures (OR = 0.29, 95% CI: 0.18–0.46), areas with religious homogeneity (OR = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.13–0.26), and among older populations (OR = 0.42, 95% CI: 0.21–0.84). High heterogeneity of our meta-analysis was attributed to three studies in which the methods varied from the other six.

Conclusion
Religion plays a protective role against suicide in a majority of settings where suicide research is conducted. However, this effect varies based on the cultural and religious context. Therefore, public health professionals need to strongly consider the current social and religious atmosphere of a given population when designing suicide prevention strategies.

Study of 94k Americans: Irreligious blacks do much more drug selling and theft than religious blacks

This study, using a sample of ~94k teens and young adults, examined the link between religiosity (church attendance and saying religion is important in their life) and drug selling and theft. The researchers found a robust inverse association for various age and demographic groups. The magnitude of the link was considerable for black males and females: the incidence of drug selling and theft was between 1.6 and 3.3 times higher for irreligious blacks compared to their religious counterparts.

Of course, a correlational study can't tell us anything about causation, but this study provides pretty good evidence that one finds more law-abiding blacks at church, and the Church has always been a central institution in the black community.

Intimate partner homicide among blacks is much higher than that of other groups

It's hard to find good stats on racial differences in intimate partner violence since this is the kind of information that makes blacks look bad. One way around this problem is to focus on the easily available homicide victim statistics. We can learn about race and perpetrating domestic violence with victim stats for two reasons: 1) at least 90% of homicides are intra-racial (within a race) so if the victim is black, the perp is too. (And when crimes are interracial, they are more likely to be black-on-white than the reverse); and 2) if a woman is killed, it's usually by a man with whom she had some kind of relationship: a boyfriend, husband, ex, or on the rare occasion, a John.

The CDC has a great website for analyzing mortality data. I generated female homicide rates for race and Hispanic status:

2018 homicide victimization rates (per 100k)

Black  6.3
American Indian  4.4
Hispanic  1.9
White 1.8
Asian  1.0

So the victim rate for black women is 6.3 times that of Asian women,  and 3.5 times that of whites. While these racial gaps are large, they are not as big as those for men (39.0 for blacks and 3.7 for whites). The male-male dynamic--killing for vengeance or saving face--seems to separate blacks and others more than the intimate partner dynamic: the man kills the woman out of jealousy, a desire to get his way, or to punish the victim.

UPDATE: Am I right in thinking that black men and women spend less time around each other in a relationship context than males and females in other groups?  If I'm right, the racial gap in domestic violence would be even larger if we adjusted for time spent together because more exposure to someone increases the risk of violence.

New admixture study finds more East Asian ancestry associated with low risk of diabetes among Pacific Islanders

This new study is based on a sample of people (n = 1,853) from Guam and Saipan.  Using ~49k SNPs the authors found genetic ancestry derived from 5 populations: Marianas Islanders, East Asians, Micronesians, Europeans, and Melanesians.

They tested the association of ancestry estimates with diabetes, fasting glucose and fasting insulin levels in study participants (n=1,853). They controlled for age, sex and end-stage kidney disease. 

All 3 traits were associated with genetic ancestry. East Asian ancestry was associated with the lowest diabetes risk and lowest mean levels of glucose and insulin, while diabetes risk and fasting glucose were highest in Marianas Islanders. The diabetes risk was 6.9 times higher for Marianas Islanders compared to East Asians. The mean differences in fasting glucose and insulin for the two groups were large. 

Data: White officers like blacks as much as non-whites do

Do white police officers dislike blacks?

The General Social Survey asked people how warmly they feel toward blacks. Answers ranged from "very warm" (scored as a 1) to "very cool" (scored as a 9) so we're really measuring coolness. Participants were also asked about their current occupation (sample size = 2,729). Here are the means by race and occupation:

Mean "coolness toward blacks" score

White police officers   3.67

White civilians   3.67

Black civilians   2.12

Other non-white civilians  3.69

White police officers do not differ from other whites in having a mean score which indicates quite a bit of warmth for blacks. 

Now, you might point out the blacks have a warmer average, but all racial groups tend to feel warmer toward themselves than other groups do. Significantly, police officers feel just as much warmth for blacks as Hispanics/Asians/etc do. So, whites and non-whites who are screaming at the police for their racism, officers are the same as your group: They feel favorably toward blacks.

New Study: "Frequency of variants associated with ADHD has steadily decreased since Paleolithic times"

New from Scientific Reports

Abstract

Attention-defcit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an impairing neurodevelopmental condition highly prevalent in current populations. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this paradox, mainly in the context of the Paleolithic versus Neolithic cultural shift but especially within the framework of the mismatch theory. This theory elaborates on how a particular trait once favoured in an ancient environment might become maladaptive upon environmental changes. However, given the lack of genomic data available for ADHD, these theories have not been empirically tested.

We took advantage of the largest GWAS meta-analysis available for this disorder consisting of over 20,000 individuals diagnosed with ADHD and 35,000 controls, to assess the evolution of ADHD-associated alleles in European populations using archaic, ancient and modern human samples. We also included Approximate Bayesian computation coupled with deep learning analyses and singleton density scores to detect human adaptation.

Our analyses indicate that ADHD-associated alleles are enriched in loss of function intolerant genes, supporting the role of selective pressures in this early-onset phenotype. Furthermore, we observed that the frequency of variants associated with ADHD has steadily decreased since Paleolithic times, particularly in Paleolithic European populations compared to samples from the Neolithic Fertile Crescent.

We demonstrate this trend cannot be explained by African admixture nor Neanderthal introgression, since introgressed Neanderthal alleles are enriched in ADHD risk variants. All analyses performed support the presence of long-standing selective pressures acting against ADHD associated alleles until recent times. Overall, our results are compatible with the mismatch theory for ADHD but suggest a much older time frame for the evolution of ADHD-associated alleles compared to previous hypotheses.