Data suggests Hispanic criminality is similar to that of blacks

Over the years, people like me have disagreed with Ron Unz that the rate of serious crime by Hispanics is not much different than that of whites.

Analysts typically rely on police or imprisonment data to estimate Hispanic/White differences, but Hispanics are significantly less likely than whites to report crimes to the police. Since Latinos are typically victimized by other Latinos (crime is typically intra-ethnic), there is an undercount of crime committed by Hispanics.

Using victim data is a method around this problem.  The National Crime Victimization Survey contacts tens of thousands of people each year to ask them about being victimized.  We can use these statistics as proxies of crime rates for various races/ethnicities. I took the estimates for 2014-2018 and averaged them since there is quite a bit of annual error, especially in a group as small as Asians.  Here are the percentages of people who were victimized by serious crime in the past year:

Percent victimized
Blacks  2.1
Hispanics  2.1
Whites  1.6
Asians  1.0
Other  3.1

See how the rates for Hispanics and blacks are the same. Prevalences for whites and especially Asians are significantly lower.

I doubt serious criminality among Latinos is exactly the same as blacks. While most crimes are intra-racial, some of the victimizations of whites, Latinos, and Asians are by blacks committing robbery or assault.

By the way, I assume that the "Other" category is mostly American Indians. Their very high prevalence is consistent with Cochran and Harpending's hypothesis that racial groups with deep histories of agriculture and powerful states experienced selection for docile and self-disciplined individuals.  Criminological research has found that criminals tend to be impulsive and disagreeable.  As people with shorter histories under agrarian states, Native Americans might have a higher percentage of these types.

Compared to other Americans, do Jews identify as 'citizens of the world'?

This year is the 15th anniversary of the publication of The Jewish Century, a very honest and insightful book by Jewish scholar Yuri Slezkine. Among many other things, Slezkine claims that the Jewish diaspora, compared with majority national groups, has identified more with the tribe and the international community and less with the nation-state.  According to him, when Jews tried to become nationalists, they dominated the highest rungs but, in the end, were rejected as interlopers. 

So, what's the situation in the US now?  Compared to other Americans, do Jews identify more as global citizens and less as Americans?  In 2014, General Social Survey (GSS) respondents were asked, "How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement? I feel more like a citizen of the world than of any country."  I excluded immigrants (sample size = 1,065).  Answers ranged from "strongly disagree" (scored as a 1) to "strongly agree" (scored as a 5).  Here are the means by religious affiliation:

Mean "Citizen of the World" Score

Buddhist   3.00
No affiliation   2.81
Catholic  2.67

Total Sample  2.66

Christian   2.63
Protestant  2.61
Jewish   2.12

Of the groups large enough to include in the list (10 or more respondents), Buddhists and the unaffiliated have the highest globalist scores, while Jews are actually at the bottom of the list.  The gap between the highest and lowest groups is nine-tenths of a standard deviation.  That's a large difference.  According to GSS data, Jews are real patriots.

Do Western populations place more value on self-sacrificing spousal love?

I'm currently reading the brand new book by Kevin MacDonald titled Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition.  I don't always agree with him, but I'm interested in anyone with big balls and interesting ideas.

According to MacDonald, Western populations evolved to value self-sacrificing love in prospective mates in order to cement close family environments and paternal investment in harsh northern environments.  Since this is an element of a slow life-history strategy, East Asians should value this trait as well, while blacks should be shifted more toward short-term mating strategies.

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked American respondents how much they agree with four statements about loving one's partner with a deep, devoted, self-sacrificing type of love.  I summed the answers to the four questions to create a scale (alpha coefficient = .83).  (It's funny: as I write this, I'm hearing these lyrics on YouTube: "I dried your tears of pain, babe, A million times for you, I'd sell my soul for you babe, For money to burn with you, I'd give you all, and have none, babe.")

Next, I calculated the mean score for ethnic/racial groups with at least 20 respondents (sample size = 1,040).  Here are the results:

Mean Love Score

Germans   13.98
Southern Europeans   13.77
American Indians  13.60
Mexicans   13.58
Italians  13.46
English/Welsh   13.38
Polish  13.38

Total Sample  13.37

Irish  13.32
Scottish  13.21
Scandinavians  13.08  
East Asians  12.34
Blacks   11.84

Americans of German descent and southern Europeans are at the top of the list, while East Asians and blacks are at the bottom.  The gap between Germans and blacks is seven-tenths of a standard deviation, a large difference.

Consistent with MacDonald's prediction, whites are in the top spot, and blacks are last.  He doesn't focus on East Asians, but he relies on life-history theory, and East Asians should fit the "slow" strategy of high family investment. 

The results seem somewhat cultural.  I noticed that not only southern Europeans but Latin Americans (many nationalities were too small to make the list) tend to score high.  This is consistent with the stereotype of the romantic Latin. 

Do young women now earn more than young men?

Stefan Molyneux retweeted today the claim that young single women now make more than young single men.  Is that true?

Using General Social Survey (GSS) data, I calculated median incomes for never-married men and women ages 18 to 29 without children who are working full-time.  The numbers shown below are the sex difference between medians, and I include all decades since the 1970s for comparison (sample size = 2,539).  The figures are in constant dollars.

Difference between median male and female incomes 
1970s    1,366
1980s    5,484
1990s       538
2000s    2,625
2010s    6,309

Young men have made more than young women in every decade for five decades, and the biggest gap has been this decade.

The gap is not due to some patriarchal conspiracy (Remind me guys, when and where is the next meeting?) to keep women down. Young men take jobs that make higher wages like construction, while young women are more likely to do something like childcare which doesn't pay crap.

More women are in college, too, so that will make them earn less in the short-term.

Does agricultural history of racial groups predict self-discipline?

Let me show you a typical move by a liberal researcher (redundant).  Imagine you want to show that blacks face bias when applying for a job.  A liberal propagandist will simply cite a statistic that blacks get turned down more often than whites as proof of discrimination. 

The researcher knows that anyone with two brain cells will counter that, "There might be reasons other than bias that blacks are less likely to get the job. They might be less likely to have preferred qualifications like a college degree."

So the researcher does a statistical analysis that adjusts for education. When the racial effect persists, the analyst concludes that it is due to discrimination.  An obvious problem with this approach is that it is assumed that race is a measure of bias. You assume what you're trying to demonstrate.

Having said that, I'm going to do exactly what the progressives do, only with my own preferred theory.

I wrote recently how Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending theorize that groups that have deeper histories of agriculture will differ in personality traits. They argue that success at farming requires the ability to plan for the long-term and the discipline to carry out the plan. If you eat your seed grain, you will have nothing to plant in the spring.

Length of agricultural goes like this from longest to shortest: Middle Eastern, Chinese/Europe, sub-Saharan African, and Native American. So the level of planning and discipline--called "conscientiousness" by personality researchers--should follow the same pattern.  We don't have an adequate number of Middle Easterners in the General Social Survey sample, so let's include Jews to represent this group. We also add Hindus as another group with a long agricultural history.

The dependent variable in the regression model is years of education and the predictors include IQ plus dummies for all these ethnic groups.  The idea behind the model is that one's education is determined by his IQ and his level conscientiousness. Once we adjust for IQ, if the ethnic dummies are still significantly related to education, this reflects conscientiousness.  I chose blacks to be the reference group since they are a large group with a shorter (and more isolated) agricultural history, and so they should be toward the low end of conscientiousness.

Here are the results (sample size = 8,898):

Years of education (standardized OLS regression coefficients)
IQ   0.43***
Jewish   0.06****
East Asian  0.03***
Hindu   0.02
White  0.01
Hispanic   -0.02*
Native American   -0.07***
Other race  -0.02

The results are dominated by IQ.  It's a powerful predictor (contrary to what N.N. Taleb says. He would say IQ-like tests get you into the school, so it's circular, but the test doesn't finish your degree for you).  Jews and East Asians finish more years of education than what is predicted by their IQs. Hispanics and especially Native Americans complete less schooling than their IQ's predict.

Following my approach, the data suggest that Jews and East Asians have high levels of consciousness, while Native Americans and Hispanics (who are part Native American) are significantly less conscientious than blacks--the reference group.
 

Does deportation of criminals have a eugenic impact on Hispanics?

Research indicates that the typical criminal has an IQ of around 90.  Since the mean IQ of Hispanics is in the same range, I wondered if the deportation of criminals is not eugenic for the Hispanic population.

Using General Social Survey (GSS) data, I estimated mean IQ for Hispanics who have ever been arrested and those who haven't.  I limited the sample to native-born Latinos since IQ tests in English are biased against people who don't speak English well (sample size = 92).

Arrestees have a mean IQ of 92.2.  For non-arrestees, the mean is 92.9--not much higher.

So it looks like removing criminal aliens does not raise Hispanic IQ.  On the other hand, removing them does help the US IQ which is around 97.  Also--removing criminals makes the Hispanic and US population less criminal. 

What about liking rap? Is it a racial or an IQ thing?

As a follow-up to my last post on IQ, race, and classical music, let's see if a fondness for rap music is more about race or intelligence.  I'll use the same statistical technique as last time (OLS regression) with General Social Survey (GSS) data (sample size = 926):

Liking Rap Music (standardized OLS regression coefficients)

IQ   -0.08*
Black   0.21***
Other non-whites   0.09**

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

Smarter people are less likely to enjoy rap, and non-whites, especially blacks, are more likely than whites to be fans regardless of intelligence.

While we found in the previous post that smart people like classical music regardless of race, here we see that a taste for rap is quite racial.  It is best predicted by race: blacks (and other nonwhites) like it, whites do not. 

Liking classical music: Is it a racial or an IQ thing?

It gives me hope that every time I turn the dial to a rock 'n' roll station, my boys complain and insist I put on some classical music.  I tell them Led Zeppelin IS classical music, but they'll have none of it.

What predicts best a fondness for classical music: race or intelligence?

The General Social Survey (GSS) asked people how much they like classical music with answer-choices ranging from "like very much" to "dislike very much." With race and IQ as predictors, I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to generate estimates.  Here are the standardized coefficients (sample size = 916):

Standardized OLS coefficients
IQ   0.31***
Black   0.02
Other non-whites   0.02

***p < .001

The only predictor that matters is IQ:  smart people are much more likely to enjoy classical music than dull ones.  Blacks tend to not like this type of music (results not shown here), but once you adjust for IQ, the race effect disappears.  In other words, the reason why fewer blacks are classic music fans is completely due to lower intelligence.  Other races do not differ from whites (results not shown), even before you adjust for IQ.

So, taste in music is more an IQ than a race thing.  This might be true of many preferences among Americans.

 UPDATE: Immigration and dysgenic trends in fertility are gradually lowering the mean IQ in the United States, so at this rate, we will see falling interest in great music. Bring on the Ranchera!

Which races are the most generous? It might surprise you.

It's the 10th anniversary of 10,000 Year Explosion, a fantastic book by Gregory Cochran and the late Henry Harpending.  You MUST read it if you haven't.  I command you.

The book is chock full of provocative hypotheses about humans.  Let's test just one of them with General Social Survey (GSS) data.  The authors explain that hunter-gatherers routinely share resources, in part because it is difficult for mobile people to hold on to things.  It's also advantageous to cement positive ties and to make others feel obligated to you by being generous with them.

By contrast, farming selects for people who are good at holding on to possessions: seed grain, breeding stock, land, etc. A farmer who gives away everything will starve.

So Cochran and Harpending predict that ethnic groups lacking deep histories of agriculture will tend to be quicker to share with others. In the US context, this would be American Indians and blacks.

The GSS asked respondents: "People help other people in ways besides giving money, time, or other things to organized groups. Sometimes people help needy people directly. During the past 12 months, did you or members of your family or household give money, food, or clothing to any of the following types of people: The homeless or street-people."

Here are the percentages who answered yes:

Percent giving to the homeless in the past year

American Indian  55.4
Blacks  45.7
Irish  44.0
East Asian  41.7

Total sample 40.2

Mexican  39.4
Italian  37.7
French  37.0
Russian  36.8
German  34.2
English/Welsh  33.1
Scottish  30.4
Asian Indian  28.6
Norwegian  20.0

Even though American Indians and blacks are poor groups, they are more likely to give to the homeless.  Groups with long agricultural histories are less likely to give, even if they are wealthy like Asian Indians.

And if you argue that giving to the homeless is largely an urban thing, American Indians tend to live in rural areas but are at the top of the list, while urban Asian Indians are at the bottom.

Are Muslims in America assimilating or not?

Since today is the anniversary of 9/11, let's take a moment to see how well Muslims are assimilating in American society.  The General Social Survey (GSS) asked respondents, "Consider a person who believes that Blacks are genetically inferior. If such a person wanted to make a speech in your community claiming that Blacks are inferior, should he be allowed to speak, or not?"

In my view, a core value of the American system is free speech.  If you don't believe in allowing people to state controversial opinions in public, you're not much of an American.

Here are the percentages in favor of free speech by religion.  Many American Muslims are blacks--I excluded them since we would expect many of them to oppose free speech for people with messages that make blacks look bad:

Of all religions, Muslims are the least supportive of free speech.

Have attitudes among Muslims improved or worsened over time?  I divided the data into two periods: 1) pre-2010 and 2) this decade:

Unfortunately, support for allowing someone with controversial racial views to speak in public has fallen among Muslims in this decade from 50.0% to 31.8%.  Not good.

Another study showing that you can tell someone's IQ by looking at his brain (especially if he is a she)

I recently reported on researchers who were able to explain 95% of the variation in general intelligence based on the morphology of the brain.  Just amazing.  Now I run across another new study--they keep pouring out--conducted by Chinese researchers that found very strong correlations between the functional connectivity of various regions of the brain and intelligence.

They mapped out thousands of nodes and the connections between nodes and found that eight connections were important for males, and 13 different connections that were crucial for predicting female IQ.  Smart women have differently wired brains than smart men.  Smart women benefitted from efficient overall brain connectivity, while smart men tended to have better wiring in specific regions of the brains.

The connections identified for women predicted female IQ more powerfully than "male" connections predicted male IQ.  They explained 72% of the variation in intelligence for women and 46% for men.  You really can predict someone's IQ by looking at the brain, but you've got to look at different networks depending on whether it's a man or woman.  SEX DIFFERENCES MATTER!

If you want a large family, this type of woman is your best bet

Using the General Social Survey (GSS) data, I looked to see which factors best predict that a woman will decide to have a large family.

I thought women from the South would have more kids, but they didn't differ from Northerners, and while conservative women have larger families, the impact is not large. IQ also predicts fewer children, but the effect is small.

I found that: 1) ideal family size, 2) church attendance, and 3) educational level, in particular, are the strongest predictors of the total number of offspring.

I'll present two women to illustrate.  The first woman says that seven children is the ideal family size. She attends church more than once a week, and she went no further than high school. The data predict that she will have 3.7 children.

The second woman says zero kids is the ideal size for a family.  She never goes to church, and she has 20 years of education.  The model based on the data predicts she will have .56 kids.  The first woman is predicted to have 6.6 more children than the second woman.

Again, the most powerful predictor by far is education.  It's even more predictive than what a woman says about ideal family size.

UPDATE:  Looking at older data, I found a predictor even more powerful than education: age at marriage.  Women who are younger when they get married have significantly more kids.

Blockbuster study on the black-white gap in intelligence

This new study on ancestry and cognitive ability by Jordan Lasker and team blew my mind.  If NN Taleb is right that IQ research is crap, then all other social science is complete shit.  Ever since I read Arthur Jensen's g Factor in 1998, I've been damned impressed by the quality of general intelligence research. I believe George Bernard Shaw said that Das Kapital made a man out of him. g Factor made a man out of me.

Jensen and Phil Rushton, vilified forever by Leftists, predicted that between 50 and 80% of the black-white gap in general intelligence was due to genetic differences. The Lefties predicted that genes explain none of the gap.

Lasker et al's study examined thousands of SNPs (DNA points) for thousands of blacks, whites, and biracials, and found that percent European ancestry explains 50-70% of the racial gap. Jensen and Rushton win, the feel-good researchers lose.

The Lefties also argued that skin color is a measure of how much a person is discriminated against, and discrimination explains the racial gap in IQ. Jensen and Rushton predicted that discrimination would not be an important cause of the difference.

Lasker and team found that skin color (discrimination) explained very little of the racial gap. Again, Jensen/Rushton emerge as the real scientists--the people whose predictions come true.

This study has moved my view on the racial gap from "probably mostly genetic" to "almost certainly mostly genetic."