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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Have you seen the studies on how in places like china, people who were part of the regime were, after the communists took over, much poorer, worse off socially, etc., but in two generations, they now are again the ones in power?

The study on this topic that I'm familiar with also found that economic success of the children of pre-revolutionary elites was mediated by an expressed belief that "hard work is critical to success" (when it was controlled for the gap dropped by 75%) and that this expressed belief was in turn mediated by having a living parent. Among the children of pre-revolutionary elites whose parents were dead (and who thus were not raised by them), there was no significant difference in expressed belief from the general population.

I can't interpret the math for myself because I'm bad at statistics but the authors say:

One could attribute part of the persistence and rebound to innate traits and characteristics, such as genetics, personalities broadly defined, intelligence, and emotional intelligence. The pattern that the pre-revolution elite’s rebound may be affected by the co-residence with their parents suggests that such innate characteristics are unlikely to be the primary driver.

This would actually seem to suggest cultural transmission rather than genetic.

Likewise (with the same caveat on my end that I'm bad at statistics) the authors of the study on the rebound of southern slaveholders after the Civil War which has been cited elsewhere in the thread claim:

This rapid recovery suggests that slaveholding households held some input— beyond monetary resources—that contributed to their descendants’ ability to accumulate wealth. We consider various explanations in turn using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative sources. We conclude that inherited ability, entrepreneurial skills, or specific human capital are unlikely to explain the recovery of slaveholders’ sons. First, results are unchanged when including surname fixed effects to control for extended family networks and other (unobservable) differences between families, including inherited ability.

(They end up concluding that social networking was the most important factor)

Thanks, that's good to know.

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