11–20 of 262 posts
Poverty harms children. It's possible it harms young adults as well. The sooner we dismiss the notion that we need the poverty to motivate us to work and adopt some form of basic income, the better. It might be cheaper too than current system when you consider all the harm that poverty does to economy and workers.
> Objective: Income volatility presents a growing public health threat. To our knowledge, no previous study examined the relationship among income volatility, cognitive function, and brain integrity.
> Methods: We studied 3,287 participants aged 23–35 years in 1990 from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults prospective cohort study. Income volatility data were created using income data collected from 1990 to 2010 and defined as SD of percent change in income and number of income drops ≥25% (categorized as 0, 1, or 2+). In 2010, cognitive tests (n = 3,287) and brain scans (n = 716) were obtained.
> Results: After covariate adjustment, higher income volatility was associated with worse performance on processing speed (β = −1.09, 95% confidence interval [CI] −1.73 to −0.44) and executive functioning (β = 2.53, 95% CI 0.60–4.50) but not on verbal memory (β = −0.02, 95% CI −0.16 to 0.11). Similarly, additional income drops were associated with worse performance on processing speed and executive functioning. Higher income volatility and more income drops were also associated with worse microstructural integrity of total brain and total white matter. All findings were similar when restricted to those with high education, suggesting reverse causation may not explain these findings.
> Conclusion: Income volatility over a 20-year period of formative earning years was associated with worse cognitive function and brain integrity in midlife.
Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..
Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food.
Not sure your point of "no money for good food"
Source- calories and protein and vitamins per dollar
Edit- fast food is not necessarily faster. Carrots and protein shakes are faster than waiting in line for example.
The article acknowledges that the study does not show causation and it seems a little strange to think a causal arrow in this direction is more plausible than the other direction. It seems like people who do better at thinking and memory tasks should also do better at their jobs and interviews and therefore be less likely to experience an income drop. To speculate on income drop's effect on mental acumen one would wa…
Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..
Sure, eating flour mixed with water is cheaper than vegetables. But I don't think people do that. Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food. Not sure your point of "no money for good food" Source- calories and protein and vitamins per dollar Edit- fast food is not necessarily faster. Carrots and protein shakes are faster than waiting in line for example.
Fast food is cheaper than home cooked food when you factor in time & mental effort. Cooking at home requires skills that many people do not have.
I would go from feeling rich one month because a freelance client had paid a bill, to not having a cent a month later.
There were times when it felt like I was running a pyramid scheme on myself. Needing to use money from a previous job to buy computer hardware to sell to the next client.
In retrospect, I was also too proud to ask for help. I let things get way out of control before my mother ended up taking out a personal loan to bail me out at one point. If I had asked for help earlier it would have been a cheaper problem to solve.
It took years to shed some of the residual behaviours, even after I started earning decent money. Despite having savings and reliable income I would still let bills run until they were overdue.
These days I'm a lot more proactive about personal finances and good money management, but it's hard to tell how much of that is just maturity, and how much is the fact that I no longer have problems with unstable income.
The article acknowledges that the study does not show causation and it seems a little strange to think a causal arrow in this direction is more plausible than the other direction. It seems like people who do better at thinking and memory tasks should also do better at their jobs and interviews and therefore be less likely to experience an income drop. To speculate on income drop's effect on mental acumen one would wa…
Would this apply to group layoffs from blue colar industries, or general downturn in specific industries ? (for instance drivers as Uber/Lyft entered the market, and now that revenues are also lowering)
It seems to me there could be an awful lot of cases where income drop has little to do with a worker's brain health or memory capacities. We are contemplating automating whole industries, subsequent layoffs will also be par for the course, whatever performance the worker was showing.
People who confuse what's possible but 10x more difficult for some income groups/backgrounds, to be the same as being equally possible and as easy. Or that think that just because some outliers managed to win the hard mode, everybody should be able to (and are just lazy if they don't) - while ignoring lucky breaks and mitigating circumstances in their case, e.g. you might be poor, but not have a parent sick to take care of. Or you might be an immigrant, but have parents working their ass off to get you to college. Or you might have a stable family as opposed to abuse. Or your teachers might not care at all to encourage you.
This is not about telling people not to try. This is about recognizing that even trying is not "equally easy", and that outlier success stories doesn't mean the game is not rigged against those from poor backgrounds. And perhaps finding ways to fix this issues (e.g. reducing poverty, abuse, stress factors for poor people, better educational districts, and so on).
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/373065/the-pencilswo...
Well it could be a lot of different things. No money for good food, sports and a lot of stress that accompanies having no steady source of income etc..
Sure, eating flour mixed with water is cheaper than vegetables. But I don't think people do that. Instead people wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food. Not sure your point of "no money for good food" Source- calories and protein and vitamins per dollar Edit- fast food is not necessarily faster. Carrots and protein shakes are faster than waiting in line for example.
You'd be surprised. Ever heard e.g. of "syrup sandwiches"?
Or dozens of other ways poor people get by with no money for food?
It's not just "fast food". And even that, it's not because they "wrongly think fast food is cheaper than home cooked food" -- it's because fast food is less stressful to make when you have to work like crazy, in excruciating jobs to make ends meets, and requires less time...
I went through a few years of unstable income in my early twenties (circa 2000), it wasn't altogether bad, just very very sporadic. When I think back on those years I had all kinds of bad behaviours that were not rational. For example, not paying bills because something more urgent might come up. Not looking at balances because it was easier to not know. I would go from feeling rich one month because a freelance clie…
This study is an odd way of looking at what is already established and known...instability has a detrimental cognitive and psychological effect on people, in particular children, but its not limited to children and extends to people with fully developed brains.