Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

lithub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 139 posts

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#71

Post by emj »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #60

I just listened to an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast from last May: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/09/721733303/whats-not-on-the-te... The subject being interviewed is a Nobel Prize winning economist, James Heckman. The starting point was noting that people who get a GED (on average) score just as well on IQ tests as those getting an ordinary HS diploma. However, their life outcomes tend to be much worse than those…

Sounds like a lot of variables to say that any one thing was what made that experiment a success. Similarly I've heard that focus in preschool years can have a very good pay back later on which supports what you say in a general way.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#72

Post by Ididntdothis »

nessus42 wrote: post #67
ska wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just knowledge, but availability. Food deserts are a real thing, as are crap apartments with dysfunctional appliances (freezers can save you a bunch of money, but only if they work reliably), etc.

I was responding to the claim that subsidies to grow the right kind of food, rather than corn, etc., might help. I mentioned the issues of housing and community, etc., that are required to actually obtain and cook food. I don't see how subsidies to farmers to grow healthier foods are going to solve the problems that you mention. I.e., I'm not denying that people living in poverty don't end up malnourished, but that w…

I was more thinking about reducing existing subsidies for unhealthy foods like sugar and corn syrup. That stuff is cheap partially because of subsidies so it gets added to everything.

When I go shopping for example apples are quite expensive compared to a bag of frozen French fries. Lettuce is also very expensive. We could change this with smarter subsidies.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#73

Post by ska »

ailideex wrote: post #65
ska wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either people have agency ... Or things are more nuanced than this view allows. What if people in general have some agency, but not always enough to counteract the larger scale actions that affect them?

> What if people in general have some agency, but not always enough to counteract the larger scale actions that affect them? Would one of those actions be the urge to have sex? If not then not sure what we are talking about here. I think the majority of people who have children they can't provide for bear the responsibility for that and I don't really see where in that you want to plug your nuance - but if you have s…

Your are assuming at least two things (there are surely more) about people who are struggling to raise kids

1) They have always been struggling, a didn't have a reasonable plan originally, and/or

2) They didn't take reasonable precautions to avoid pregnancy but still end up pregnant, and believe their best option was to raise the child

Both of these assumptions are clearly false in general although I don't know enough about the issues to hesitate a guess on percentages.

I was mostly thinking about (1). Someone with a partner and a solid household income can easily become a struggling single parent, for example, without having made any obviously bad decisions.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#74

Post by ailideex »

allovernow wrote: post #43
ailideex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In discussions about low income families I often see somebody comment along the lines of blaming the parents for making bad choices and choosing to have children they couldn't afford/care for/want. So just to be clear on some points before I get accused of holding positions I do not hold. I am all for helping children who were let down by their parents. I don't think they should be condemned. I also grew up very po…

>When it comes to this issue, you need to pick a lane and stay in it This is a good example where black and white thinking is dangerous. Some people have more control over their circumstances than others. That includes parents providing (or not) for their children. You don't need to be an apologist for bad parenting to acknowledge that human circumstances are due to some combination of choices, intrinsic nature, and…

> Some people have more control over their circumstances than others. That includes parents providing (or not) for their children.

I don't think the majority of the poverty problem comes from otherwise well to do parents falling on hard luck. At least in South Africa and I would think most of the rest of Africa this is not the case. If people just made sure to be in a position where they have the capability to provide for children at the point in time when they have them the poverty issue will be almost entirely gone.

And already just something as simple as providing a two parent household and not having children before 25 already virtually guarantees that they will not be impoverished:

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-deny-the-link-b...

- https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-succ...

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#75

Post by ohyeshedid »

lopmotr wrote: post #30
wonderwonder wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolutely, same boat. I have to think that my kids just not having to listen to their parents constantly fight about money like I did has to go a long way. Going to the store with friends and your parents have to pay with food stamps carries a certain stigma. I had good parents who always worked hard (not necessarily smart) and did the best they could for us, so I have no other complaints but I was definitely very a…

Why were they fighting if they were good parents? My parents were poor but didn't fight. They just didn't buy much and they both accepted that and tried hard to improve things.

Your parents likely fought more than you'd be aware of, in the argumentative sense. Unless you're trying to claim you were raised in the first household in history with absolutely no conflict? Your binary viewpoints belie the superiority you're projecting.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#76

Post by Frondo »

wang_li wrote: post #46
altacc wrote: post #3

In discussions about low income families I often see somebody comment along the lines of blaming the parents for making bad choices and choosing to have children they couldn't afford/care for/want. This is used as a reason not to provide any social support to those families as they see it as rewarding bad behaviour. But these children didn't make those choices and they now exist in their circumstances through no faul…

You cannot rationally hold the belief that people can be allowed to have as many children anytime they want and that all children will be provided for regardless of the ability of their individual parents to provide for them. Such parents have shown they have no limiting factor, so the end result is that all children will be poor as you divert greater and greater resources from parents who act in more responsible way…

> How do you justify tapping the productivity of a Boeing working in Renton...

Well, the direct answer is: these are all Americans, and all pay some kind of tax to their city, county, state, and ultimately the country, in theory so they can draw on the shared resources of the nation. That's how you justify supporting the kid in Mississippi and not the kid in Cambodia.

As for rationally holding the belief that people can have as many kids as they want, and those kids will be cared for, yes, you can hold those simultaneously. I don't want any kids in my country to go hungry; how many siblings they have or what choices their parents have made are irrelevant to those individual kids' needs being met. There's no conflict there.

We live, as they say, in a society.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#77

Post by ailideex »

ska wrote: post #73
ailideex wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if people in general have some agency, but not always enough to counteract the larger scale actions that affect them? Would one of those actions be the urge to have sex? If not then not sure what we are talking about here. I think the majority of people who have children they can't provide for bear the responsibility for that and I don't really see where in that you want to plug your nuance - but if you have s…

Your are assuming at least two things (there are surely more) about people who are struggling to raise kids 1) They have always been struggling, a didn't have a reasonable plan originally, and/or 2) They didn't take reasonable precautions to avoid pregnancy but still end up pregnant, and believe their best option was to raise the child Both of these assumptions are clearly false in general although I don't know enoug…

I think we completely rule out cases where people were in a good financial position and could provide for children and cases where people were using birth control child poverty will remain virtually unchanged.

https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-succ...

> The researchers further suggest that the "fraction of children living in single-parent households is the strongest correlation of upward income mobility among all the variables we explored."

See also: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/single-mothers-new-yo...

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#79

Post by BEEdwards »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #31
wonderwonder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that we have plenty of money to subsidize farming for both ethanol and tariffs, seems like we could go a step further and work on greatly reducing the cost of food. We would need to do so in such a way that all of the funds are not just going to massive corporations that just swallow the funds, something we don't really seem to be able to do currently.

The cost of food has been doing a great job of declining all on its own.

All on it's own, you know not counting the government subsidies designed for that purpose.

Re: Poverty hurts children in ways we're beginning to understand

#80

Post by ska »

nessus42 wrote: post #67
ska wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just knowledge, but availability. Food deserts are a real thing, as are crap apartments with dysfunctional appliances (freezers can save you a bunch of money, but only if they work reliably), etc.

I was responding to the claim that subsidies to grow the right kind of food, rather than corn, etc., might help. I mentioned the issues of housing and community, etc., that are required to actually obtain and cook food. I don't see how subsidies to farmers to grow healthier foods are going to solve the problems that you mention. I.e., I'm not denying that people living in poverty don't end up malnourished, but that w…

The issue with food deserts isn't lack of available food, it's lack of good options being for a number of connected reasons. I'm suggesting that providing more "right kinds" of food at the source (e.g. farms) is perhaps not enough to shift this dynamic.
Post reply on HN