Do NAMs want to tax the rich because they're poor or because they're NAMs?

Predictors of wanting to tax the rich, N = 4,743.
Predictors	b	b	b
Black	.87	.59	.57
Hispanic	.65	.46	.38
Income	--	-1.08	-.99
Liberalism	--	--	.32

Compared to whites, non-Asian minorities (NAMs) are more likely to favor the government reducing income inequality by taxing the wealthy. Is this because they are poor and liberal, or because they are NAMs?

The table displays unstandardized OLS coefficients. The first model includes only two predictors: whether or not the respondent is black and whether or not the respondent is Hispanic.  Both groups are significantly more likely than whites and Asians (the reference group) to favor taxing the rich. In the second equation, income is added. Not surprisingly, higher-income people are less likely to favor being taxed to reduce inequality. This is the same finding reported in the last post. The coefficients indicate that the influence of income reduces the effect of race, but even with the adjustment, blacks and Hispanics are significantly more likely to favor income equalization. And you can see that even when the extent of one's liberalism is added to the model, the racial gap persists, just in a reduced form.

In other words, blacks and Hispanics want to tax the rich: 1) because they are poor; 2) because they are liberal; and 3) because they are minorities. Each of the variables has an independent effect, but of course, income and liberalism may just be mediating the relationship between race and taxes. It is not unreasonable to conclude that NAMs are poor and liberal because they are NAMs.

But even if we partial out the effects of income and politics to see what is left of race, income and liberalism reduce the racial effect by less than half (just compare coefficients across the models). The pattern of results is consistent with the view that NAMs want high taxes for the wealthy because they perceive them as privileged and white, and this feeling goes beyond simply being poor and liberal .     

Ice People and NAM countries and migration

This Gallup graph shows that the adult population of many NAM countries would collapse if all inhabitants who wanted to emigrate were able to.

By the same token, many Ice People countries (and oil-rich places) would be swamped if every person who wanted to move could. Ice People need to wise up and use some of that iciness to keep out the folks who would sink the lifeboat.

NAMs much more optimistic about the future

Pew reported an interesting finding. A sample of Americans were asked: "When your children are the age you are now, will their standard of living be much/somewhat better, about the same, or much/somewhat worse than yours is now?" 

The racial differences are striking. While 69 percent of blacks and 64 percent of Hispanics answered much or somewhat better, only 38 percent of whites answered this way. Why are minorities so much more optimistic? 

I think there are several possibilities. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that minorities feel better about the current administration which, in turn, makes them more positive about the future. 

Second, non-Asian minorities are poorer than whites, so perhaps kids moving up from poverty seems more feasible than middle-income white kids moving up to the upper-income bracket. 

Third, minorities sense, especially in the middle of a liberal administration, that government is always growing, and government is good for them and their kids. Whites, on the other hand, may see the same thing but are more likely to think that a growing government will impoverish their children.  

Candor on surveys

ADD Health interviewers were asked the following about the study participant: "How candid was the respondent?" Answers ranged from "very candid" (1) to "not candid" (4).  Here are means by race/ethnicity:

Mean evasiveness score (N = 6,477)

Males
White 1.64
Black 1.89*
Mexican 1.82*
Puerto Rican 1.93*
Cuban 1.80 
Amerindian 1.65
Asian 1.66

Females
White 1.55
Black 1.82*
Mexican 1.65
Puerto Rican 1.89* 
Cuban 1.85
Amerindian 1.55
Asian 1.61

*significantly higher than white counterpart


For both sexes, blacks and Puerto Ricans were significantly more evasive than whites. Mexican American males were also less candid than their white counterparts. The largest gap is between whites and Puerto Ricans. It turns out to be one-third of a standard deviation (sd) for males and four-tenths of an sd for females--moderate differences. 

The numbers are consistent with another study I described which found that, compared to whites, blacks and Hispanics score higher on lie scales when participating in surveys. It might simply be due to mistrust of authorities. These results suggest that the true racial gaps in undesirable behaviors like crime might be larger than survey data indicate.     

NAM underachievement due, in part, to less studying

This is an interesting research study (Wei-Cheng Mau, Richard Lynn. 1999. Racial and ethnic differences in motivation for educational achievement in the United States. Personality and Individual Differences, 27, 1091-1096):

Data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study show that on standardised scores in mathematics, reading and science, the highest mean scores are obtained by Asians and whites and lower scores are obtained by Hispanics and blacks. The same differences are present for the number of hours per week devoted to homework. It is suggested that motivational differences expressed in the amount of homework undertaken contribute to the group differences in educational achievement. Statistically significant correlations between the amount of homework and educational achievement support this hypothesis. There are also group differences in intelligence parallel to those in educational achievement, suggesting both intelligence and motivation are involved in racial and ethnic differences in educational achievement.

Few NAMs watching the Olympics

From Nielsen, the graph suggests a cultural divide. While whites and Asian Americans have been watching the Olympics in large numbers (white numbers not shown), few blacks and Hispanics are interested.

Don't miss Steve Sailer's article at VDARE where he makes careful use of L.A. county homicide data to show minority proneness to crime.  

Allow me to add one point to his argument. The state of California has been going after gang-related crime aggressively for a couple decades now. For a given crime, membership in a gang will get you a much longer sentence. Blacks and Hispanics have been disproportionately impacted by this strategy since few gang members are white. If these thousands of gang members were free on L.A. streets, minority crime rates would be substantially higher.

More on IQ diversity among NAMs: Reader Jokah Macpherson pointed out in the post on IQ heterogeneity that it seems to be inversely correlated with IQ. This is no accident: the coefficient of variation (CV) divides the standard deviation by the mean, and it is appropriate when comparing populations with different means. If, however, we stick with the plain old standard deviation we get:


Wordsum standard deviation

Puerto Rican 2.48
American Indian 2.25
Mexican 2.05
Polish 2.01
Scottish 1.99
Spanish 1.98
English 1.97
French 1.95
Italian 1.95
Blacks 1.94
Irish 1.94
German 1.92
Russian 1.91
Norwegian 1.87
Dutch 1.86
Swedish 1.86
Danish 1.85
Czech 1.84
Jewish 1.83


There's some shuffling around here, but the most noticeable change to me is the drop of blacks from high to middle. The CV for blacks is so high because their mean IQ is so low. But for the most part the message is the same as the last post: NAMs (non-Asian minorities) are diverse in terms of intelligence. This time, my sociology professor was right: they're not all the same. It's the Jews who are all the same. (That's a joke, son.)

NAMs and the Flynn effect: In the last post on the Flynn effect, I used GSS data to show that the mean Wordsum scores of people born in the United States of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent have risen over the past two decades. I list below the mean scores for a larger number of ethnic groups over the past four decades.


Mean Wordsum scores

Mexican
Seventies 4.17
Eighties 4.04
Nineties 5.11
This decade 5.53*

Black
Seventies 4.82
Eighties 4.91
Nineties 5.10
This decade 5.38*

Amerindian
1972-1989 3.68
1990-2008 4.47

English/Welsh
Seventies 6.70
Eighties 6.74
Nineties 7.00
This decade 6.95

German
Seventies 6.14
Eighties 6.22
Nineties 6.28
This decade 6.40

Irish
Seventies 6.47
Eighties 6.30
Nineties 6.49
This decade 6.59

Italian
Seventies 6.11
Eighties 6.08
Nineties 6.43
This decade 6.47

Polish
Seventies 6.28
Eighties 6.43
Nineties 6.47
This decade 6.23

Scottish
Seventies 7.08
Eighties 6.54
Nineties 6.77
This decade 7.03

Jewish
Seventies 7.42
Eighties 7.58
Nineties 7.32
This decade 7.47

* Significant change between first and last period, .05 level, two-tail test.


The American Indian sample size is very low after you remove blacks and whites who say their main ethnicity is Native American, so I had to limit the comparison to two periods. The difference between the two would very likely be statistically significant if the sample were larger.

There is a clear pattern here: none of the white groups have seen significant improvements since the early 1970s when the vocabulary test was first given, but all of the non-white groups have improved. I suggested before that fewer NAMs have good English language models, but the increased hours of television viewing might have helped compensate in the last couple of decades. Kids watch several hours of TV each day, and they often watch peers that they want to imitate. Characters on television usually speak well. (Of course, it doesn't help if they are speaking another language well). White kids often have good models anyway, so people on television with good vocabularies are redundant.

Anyway, that is one explanation, but others ideas to account for the pattern are appreciated.

(TV can't be THAT powerful, or generations wouldn't continue to have strong accents.)

NAM neighbors hang out, whites socialize

Some readers were skeptical of my earlier analysis where I concluded that whites are more neighborly than NAMs. I found another question with more respondents (N = 16,572): how often do you spend an evening with a neighbor. The graphs above shows that NAMs are more likely to hang out with someone almost every night, or never. Whites are more likely to visit once a month or several times a year.

NAMs are more likely to have a neighborhood buddy that they hang out with all the time, while for whites it's more of an occasion. More likely to be a dinner party, I imagine--that sort of thing. (I could be wrong: NAMs might be rotating among several neighbors).

Combined with the post on taking care of plants and pets, whites might be more role-oriented: a neighbor should do such and such.

Whites are more neighborly than NAMs

It's funny how accusations of racism always make me want to look at statistics. After the Church Ladies over at TPM predictably called Steve Sailer a racist--and thus conveniently passed over his insights--I felt like looking at racial stats. I'll grow tired of posting hatefacts the day the hysteria ceases. When hell freezes over, in other words.

The General Social Survey asked 2,069 respondents how often they looked after a person's plant or a pet in the past year. The graph shows that whites help out much more often. Sixty-six percent of blacks and 54 percent of "others" never did it, compared to only 36 percent of whites. Fifty-nine percent of Mex-Ams never did it (graph not shown).

Of course, the Big Bad White Man made them unneighborly.


Variables: RACE, ETHNIC, HELPAWAY