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

You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–98 of 98 posts

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#91

Post by spranesh »

sjf wrote: post #3

I think it's great exercise, but why don't they just use an absolute scale for parent's income? "About $2,400 in annual income separates the bottom two dots, while nearly $1 million separates the top two", I would never have guessed this either.

I completely agree. Percentiles are a very unintuitive way of thinking for this sort of data. It's really easy to know how much one made last year, but it takes a while to figure out what percentile one's income was in. Differences in Percentile vs differences in Income is even harder.

I felt strongly about this the moment I read the article on NYTimes - I reproduced the data set to the best extent I could and actually went about plotting against absolute income:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jD87QN3pPZjoefrAm4E_...

That's a far more intuitive chart, that a lot of us will understand better. I also graphed how much these children actually go on to earn against absolute income. I compared these results in a blog post - http://unside.t4you.in/data/intuitive-axes/

HTH.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#92

Post by stegosaurus »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #90
stegosaurus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average person in the UK cannot save 51% of net income. It is totally impossible. Difficult even for someone earning above the median wage. Is paying the rent 'living high on the hog'? I don't get it. Rent alone on a studio flat in loads of places is 10K. If you move away you earn less than you save on the rent. What's the suggestion? Live 2 to a room? Live in a car? Theoretically possible if you're determined I…

The 5'th decile in the UK earns a little under double what the 1st decile does. Since the people in the 1st decile aren't dying, that suggests that yes - someone in the 5'th decile could live like a person in the 1'st decile and save 50%. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-how-... Pretty much every story you could tell to explain this away (e.g., folks in the City earn 2x as much but cost of livi…

How does that follow?

A person working in London cannot live like a person working in Preston (for the same amount). The same quality of life costs more.

Surely you understand this? Do you work FT? I don't really know how to go further with this, it feels a bit like trying to prove that the sky is blue.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#93

Post by yummyfajitas »

stegosaurus wrote: post #92
yummyfajitas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 5'th decile in the UK earns a little under double what the 1st decile does. Since the people in the 1st decile aren't dying, that suggests that yes - someone in the 5'th decile could live like a person in the 1'st decile and save 50%. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-how-... Pretty much every story you could tell to explain this away (e.g., folks in the City earn 2x as much but cost of livi…

How does that follow? A person working in London cannot live like a person working in Preston (for the same amount). The same quality of life costs more. Surely you understand this? Do you work FT? I don't really know how to go further with this, it feels a bit like trying to prove that the sky is blue.

If that's the case, then you need to adjust your income/wealth/etc inequality numbers by that same factor. I.e., the inequality for a person living in London and earning 2x as much as someone in Preston might need to be adjusted down to perfect equality (assuming the cost of living in London is also 2x Preston). So why didn't you adjust your numbers in this way?

Also, if inequality is merely a matter of where one lives, why do you care?

As I said, this sort of observation seriously undermines basically every complaint about inequality.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#94

Post by stegosaurus »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #93
stegosaurus wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that follow? A person working in London cannot live like a person working in Preston (for the same amount). The same quality of life costs more. Surely you understand this? Do you work FT? I don't really know how to go further with this, it feels a bit like trying to prove that the sky is blue.

If that's the case, then you need to adjust your income/wealth/etc inequality numbers by that same factor. I.e., the inequality for a person living in London and earning 2x as much as someone in Preston might need to be adjusted down to perfect equality (assuming the cost of living in London is also 2x Preston). So why didn't you adjust your numbers in this way? Also, if inequality is merely a matter of where one liv…

Well, my argument is that most cannot save. Relevant amounts, anyway (a grand a year isn't going to really get you anywhere).

Your rebuttal was that the 5th decile earning twice as much surely can, because the 1st decile survive by spending less.

My argument is that the 5th decile are predominantly in higher cost of living areas and end up in roughly the same situation.

But let's just concede and say that they can. No doubt some can - there are people earning median UK wage in the north.

The bottom guys still can't save at all. Do they just not matter? Should 10/20/30/40% of the population be stuck renting for their entire lives? Is that reasonable?

I am not making the claim that a London worker earning double a Preston worker is a problem.

My claim is that people earning far more than that being able to build masses of capital whilst others cannot build capital at all is a problem.

It's not really about the numbers at all; it's more the idea that me "owning" 20 homes and forcing others to labour if they want to live in them is OK.

I dunno. I kind of don't have enough interest in continuing this, I gain nothing from convincing you. I know people who cannot save, many of them, they exist. They aren't intelligent enough to get out of that hole unless they won a lottery or similar. I don't need to convince you that they exist, because I can like, go and visit them. I want to fix that, you seemingly don't, best of luck.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#95

Post by anigbrowl »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #85
anigbrowl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't consume if you don't have any wealth to spend. Conversely, the wealthier one is the lower one's marginal propensity to consume. Very wealthy peoplewho literally have more money than they know what to do with end up investing the rest, but thanks to financialization (among other things) that investment doesn't generate as much demand for labor as it used to, making it harder for people without surplus capita…

Conversely, the wealthier one is the lower one's marginal propensity to consume. I'm glad you agree that stegosaurus is wrong, and that increased wealth inequality isn't a strong driver of consumption inequality or educational inequality. I know you love to characterize poor people as living high on the hog... Since you are using the phrase "high on the hog", I think you actually meant to respond to my other post. Bu…

I'm confused about the 'high on the hog thing' from your other post (I just didn't feel like replying to both), because stegosaurus was talking about inability to save during the baseline cost of living, which you went on to suggest was treated very differently in the US.

I think you're equating the US being a rich society compared to others with all the people in the US being rich in absolute terms, disregarding their relative poverty within the US. But you know very well that absolute measures of wealth are pretty meaningless given the fact of geographic dispersion. If you're talking to someone who doesn't know how to get ahead in the US and feels pinched by a lack of disposable income, observing that they're far better off than a peasant in some other country isn't responsive to their problem, notwithstanding the truth of the matter. It's not like this person struggling with poverty in the US can just relocate to the peasant area and start leveraging his capital advantage.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#96

Post by stegosaurus »

anigbrowl wrote: post #95
yummyfajitas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, the wealthier one is the lower one's marginal propensity to consume. I'm glad you agree that stegosaurus is wrong, and that increased wealth inequality isn't a strong driver of consumption inequality or educational inequality. I know you love to characterize poor people as living high on the hog... Since you are using the phrase "high on the hog", I think you actually meant to respond to my other post. Bu…

I'm confused about the 'high on the hog thing' from your other post (I just didn't feel like replying to both), because stegosaurus was talking about inability to save during the baseline cost of living, which you went on to suggest was treated very differently in the US. I think you're equating the US being a rich society compared to others with all the people in the US being rich in absolute terms, disregarding the…

I think that what yummyfajita is trying to get at is the idea that as societies the US, UK etc spend up to their limits rather than saving.

The problem is that this doesn't really generalise into individuals being able to opt out of the spending.

If everyone refused to pay 50% of their income on rent then rents would fall (unlike, say, food production, the homes won't just cease to exist).

But an individual can't affect that change. If they want to work in a city, they rent in that city.

There are a few oddball solutions that can work in unique cases. Living with parents works if they are willing and your hometown has a decent employment market. Living in a car might work in some places. House sharing might work if you can find reasonable housemates and you are well paid (if you have no hope of ever saving much, then it's pointless to inflict a crap life upon yourself for a future that will never come).

The idea that people spend loads on crap just doesn't add up to me though. When rent, energy, taxes and minimum food (e.g. 20pw rice and beans diet) add up to most of your income, does it really matter what you do with the small amount left over?

edit: Oh; and the capital advantage on moving doesn't exist. Most people have zero net worth.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#97

Post by rahimnathwani »

smrtinsert wrote: post #61
rahimnathwani wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Every hard working educated parent deserves this..." Why do they deserve this? And how do you define 'educated'? And who should provide these things if the market doesn't (i.e. how can it be fixed)?

In the future, when your job gets outsourced to China for a fraction of what you earn currently, ask yourself the same questions.

My job _is_ in China. I have lived in China for almost 5 years, so am competing with others in the local job market.

Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances

#98

Post by frobozz »

0x09 wrote: post #56
reqres wrote: post #8

As somebody who's spent some time studying the impact of various levers (income, educational achievement, maternal education etc) on university/college enrolment I'd like to throw in an economist's perspective that the NY Times did not include in the chart. You may draw the conclusion from the chart that income prevents the poorest from attending university because they can't afford the fees. This is highly misleadin…

> when you control for educational achievement (i.e. how well students achieve in pre-uni schooling), income level is a much weaker predictor of whether someone attends university. The primary driver of low university enrolment is educational achievement. The Times reported the exact opposite finding a year ago: > whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much m…

The two findings are unrelated.

>> whether someone attends university.

>> whether a student graduates or not

Post reply on HN