Brain Drain Across the United States • Hacker News Board

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#151

Post by jasonkester » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #144

jasonkester wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps educated people are better at realising that 40 is a “reasonable age” to have children, while 24 is not. Raising kids after 15 years of extra life experience, savings, and career advancement sure does make having kids easy. It was pretty straightforward in my experience but I couldn’t imagine how I would have pulled it off back when I was trying to scrape together some savings with my entry level job and tiny…

Biologically, 40 is a bad age to have kids at. The risk of Down syndrome and other diseases increases by a lot with each passing year in the 30s and it's anyways harder to conceive. Pregnancies over 35 are considered risky and are monitored much more closely. Having kids early is problematic because of the changing economic factors: job uncertainty combined with families moving for jobs and not being able to rely on…

The thing they don’t talk about much is that age isn’t so much the factor as overall health. The two correlate pretty well, so it’s more polite to talk in terms of age, but we could watch the way my fit, active, wife was treated compared to a more sedentary, overweight, woman 10 years younger, and it was clear which one people were more concerned about.

Beyond that, even assuming the official numbers are right, I was still happy to exchange “lose one lottery draw when it counts” for an extra 15 years of doing thing you can’t do after having kids. (And of course being able to afford having them comfortably.)

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#152

Post by JamesBarney » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

kgarten wrote: post #123

JamesBarney wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence and conscientousness are both very heritable and highly correlated with success. And there are no educational interventions that come close to the effect size of intelligence or conscientousness.

What do you mean by intelligence and conscientiousness? If you are referring to IQ scores, yes it seems there’s a factor that’s inherited. For intelligence, I would like to know your definition and the research you are basing it on. Even for IQ scores it‘s not so clear, as our measure of IQ is variable and there are no longitudinal studies to my knowledge showing what you claim.

There are a bunch of longitudinal iq studies which show a large erfect.

And by conscientiousness I meant the big 5 psychology measure which also has large longitudinal studies.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#153

Post by burfog » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

Rafuino wrote: post #30

js2 wrote: post #2

Conclusion States which retain and attract highly-educated adults stand to reap substantial economic benefits. At the same time, those that bleed much of their homegrown talent will see their economic fortunes decline if they fail to replace the leavers with highly-educated out-of-staters. Yet even if they do manage to offset their losses, these states are still losing a vital source of social capital. What is more,…

"As those natives who have more resources leave, those left behind may struggle to support churches, police athletic leagues, parent-teacher associations, and local businesses." Huh... churches are the first thing that come to mind. Yep, this was definitely written by a Utah senate staff.

I was out driving in rural Kentucky one day, along a long narrow gravel road with sparse houses, and came across a church. The church had a sign advertising a get-together with shotguns. I think it was skeet shooting, possibly as a fundraiser.

I don't even go to church or have a shotgun, but I suddenly wanted to live there and be a part of that community. I guess you could say that that sort of genuine community made me envious.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#154

Post by neilv » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

There's a related drain on big university cities/towns.

I stayed in Boston after CS-ish grad school, but pretty much all the other students left immediately/shortly after finishing. If they didn't go to professorships (the minority), it was usually SF or NYC.

The reasons, besides job opportunities, were young nightlife (e.g., dating pool are frumpy nerds, bars/clubs/restaurants close up early by big city standards, subway stops before last call), and quality of life for cost of living (young STEM/med/law new-grads who want to be in-town often pay out the nose to rent with roommates in a run-down old tinderbox apartment with lead paint that was built 100 years ago as cheap housing for poor people), and weather. And, thinking forward a couple years, a house/apartment big&nice enough to start a family is outside the means of most people.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#155

Post by ccffph » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:17 AM UTC

kgarten wrote: post #125

reredacted wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmfao, it may not be genetic, but it's obviously inheritable.

Yes, so change the public education system that more people get a better education? Look at Sweden/Norway etc., or do you argue that their genes are different ;) I mean education in the US sucks ... you need to be rich to give your kids a good one (comparable to what’s free in Europe)

My mother, a poor immigrant, managed to provide me with education just fine in the US. Nothing to do with the funding or programs or systems - its just willpower.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#156

Post by MandieD » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:20 AM UTC

T-A wrote: post #35

Mirioron wrote: post #9

Imagine what the effect of this is in the EU, where average income can differ up to 5-10 times between the poor and rich countries. Freedom of movement means they can still work in any of the EU countries.

That seems like an exaggeration. Sorting on the net PPP column at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... the lowest EU member is Bulgaria (1475), the highest is Luxembourg (3843); that's a factor 2.6. The EU also has much larger cultural barriers to movement than the US (different languages, just to mention the most obvious one).

PPP only fully matters if you a) insist on living a local-typical lifestyle and b) intend to live there forever. Immigrants to Germany do not run out and get nearly-new Golfs and rent townhouses; they tend to be content with somewhat nicer than where they came from for at least the first few years, presumably saving up the difference, often with plans to head home someday.

German is also widely taught in Eastern European schools, so the language barrier isn’t as high as Americans think it is.

(Sample: Romanians, Poles and Croatians I know through work)

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#157

Post by siedes » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #134

michelpp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short order the Supreme Court will decide on whether or not to include a citizenship question on the upcoming census. The result of including the question will sow fear in non-citizens, fully entitled to be counted (the census requires "whole persons", not just citizens) and is projected to cause an undercount of many, many millions of people in "brain gain" states. This will directly effect the amount of federal…

If the census can ask any questions at all other than “how many people are in your household,” then certainly a question of citizenship is relevant. Many, many countries include citizenship in their census, it’s not at all unreasonable. Citizenship is far more relevant than race. France for example, forbids asking race and ethnicity however they do, in fact, ask about citizenship. Why wouldn’t we want to know the cit…

>"Why wouldn’t we want to know the citizenship of the people living in the country? "

I think he told us that answer already. His politics benefits from noncitizens being counted in the census, so it would be problematic if such a question were to scare away any illegal immigrants living in the U.S (this is because no permanent legal resident is scared of citizenship questions, since it's usually clarified if something is okay for a legal resident noncitizen or not).

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#158

Post by steve_taylor » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

jraby3 wrote: post #85

defen wrote: post #51

Now, consider the "meta-brain-drain" of 1) increased assortative mating (people are increasingly more likely to marry someone of similar educational and professional achievement) and 2) college-educated women delaying childbirth and having fewer children than non-college-educated women. The net result is that more educated people tend to have fewer children than the less educated. If we assume educational attainment…

I don’t believe educational attainment is that strongly correlated with intelligence. Their are so many environmental and societal factors at play.

And there are plenty degrees that don’t require intelligence.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#159

Post by scarejunba » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:27 AM UTC

Guthur wrote: post #38

vcavallo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bummer that just mentioning someone’s name requires this kind of prefacing

Hardly surprising. As has been mentioned else where unless you follow a particular political dogma then you are anti intellectual and therefore to be excluded. It's amusingly ironic how exclusive the politics of inclusion can be.

Jesus Christ. Sometimes you get downvoted. Sometimes you get upvoted. Either describe the damned concept or stop wasting our time lamenting how much we'll express our dislike.

Re: Brain Drain Across the United States

#160

Post by y4mi » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #141

shmageggy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like we as a society need to figure out a way to make "have children at a reasonable age" not be a low-status move for highly educated / driven / intelligent women. Isn't the obvious answer better maternity leave laws? Ambitious women in the US don't have kids because it fucks their career. The US is literally last among OECD countries, offering zero guaranteed maternity pay [1]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/…

I have several friends which had kids in Germany: * Mothers are protected from firing once they announce the pregnancy. There are still stupid people which fire them and put pressure on them. A friend's boss threw a fit because several of his employees got pregnant and actually said he won't hire women any more. That was likely just blowing off steam, but still. * The mother can take 12 or 24 months off, but gets the…

> The pay is capped at 1800 EUR / month, so if she earns well she'll lose a ton of money.

Uh, I haven't had to use it but from what my siblings told me it's always a massive pay cut. You supposedly get 60% of your normal wage... Capped to 1800€