Thursday, May 04, 2006

Current social conditions and dysgenic trends: Steve Sailer has written that ethnic groups react differently to the same social conditions. For example, while the harmful, unintended consequences of the liberal welfare state might be limited among Swedes, they have been pervasive among American blacks. Let's look and see if this is true for dysgenic fertility patterns. I calculated the mean number of children had by women with various characterstics who are ages 40 to 60, and I did this for both blacks and whites separately:

whites, less than high school 2.7
whites, graduate degree 1.6
ratio 1.69

blacks, less than high school 3.4
blacks, graduate degree 2.0
ratio 1.70

whites, low prestige job 2.3
whites, high prestige job 1.9
ratio 1.21

blacks, low prestige job 2.7
blacks, high prestige job 2.4
ratio 1.13

whites, not working 2.0
whites, full-time job 1.9
ratio 1.05

blacks, not working 2.7
blacks, full-time job 2.4
ratio 1.13

whites, poor health 1.8
whites, good health 2.1
ratio .86

blacks, bad health 2.5
blacks, good health 2.5
ratio 1.00

whites, mental illness 2.0
whites, no mental illness 2.1
ratio .95

blacks, mental illness 3.0
blacks, no mental illness 2.4
ratio 1.25

whites, IV drug use 1.8
whites, no IV drug use 2.0
ratio .90

blacks, IV drug use 3.4
blacks, no IV drug use 2.3
ratio 1.48

whites, arrested 2.8*
whites, never arrested 2.8
ratio 1.00

blacks, arrested 7.0
blacks, never arrested 3.0
ratio 2.33

First, black fertility is higher generally. As for the ratios, the more it is above one, the more dysgenic the trend. The more it falls below one, the more eugenic the trend. For education, the dysgenic trend is strong and the same for both groups. The negative trends are weaker for occupational prestige and unemployment, and the two groups are similar.

A difference in impact is more clearly seen with health factors. For overall health, whites enjoy a eugenic trend--blacks do not. The same is true for mental illness, and especially for IV drug use.

The difference is even more dramatic for crime. Whereas there is no dysgenic trend here for whites, there is a very large one for blacks.

So according to these data, the current welfare state we live is hurting the quality of white and black community roughly equally in terms of productivity. Uneducated, unemployed whites and blacks are out-reproducing their counterparts in roughly equal amounts. This situation is clearly different in the area of health and crime. Unhealthy blacks are out-reproducing healthy ones, while unhealthy whites do not have as many children as healthy whites. And while criminal and non-criminal whites have the same number of children, criminal blacks have more than twice as many.

These trends suggest a future of decreasingly productive but healthier whites on the one hand, but less productive, less healthy, and more criminal blacks, on the other hand.

*I had to use an older sample to analyze crime, so the fertility numbers are higher.

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