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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2910 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 7, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Isn't "middle class", or even subgroups like "lower-middle class", "upper-middle class", etc. still a pretty broad income range?

The question is the extent to which the behaviors I mention vary between the categories. To use SES as a proxy for those behaviors, you would want to look at how those behaviors vary by income, and construct income categories such that the categories act as decent proxies. If the mean person in the category "lower middle class" uses drugs once a week while pregnant, but the mean person in "middle class" uses drugs once a month, that might be fine (depending on what level of drug use is necessary to affect kids), even if the average person at the top of the lower middle class category is indistinguishable from the person at the very bottom of the middle class category (which of course is likely to be the case)

Don't people clear basic pathologies like alcoholism and drug use after they get out of the lower class?

I am not sure what you mean by "clear" - do you mean that they use drugs less when they move up? I am not sure why that matters; the question is how much they engaged in those behaviors when they were pregnant.

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