Giving Cash to Low-Income Mothers Linked to Increased Brain Activity in Their Babies, Study Suggests (time.com) 169
New research suggests giving extra cash to low-income mothers can change their infants' brain development. Time reports: Brain measurements at age 1 showed faster activity in key brain regions in infants whose low-income families received $300-plus monthly for a year, compared with those who got $20 each month, U.S. researchers reported Monday. The same type of brain activity has been linked in older children to learning skills and other development, although it's unclear whether the differences found will persist or influence the infants' future. The researchers are investigating whether the payments led to better nutrition, less parent stress or other benefits to the infants. There were no restrictions on how the money was spent.
The results suggest reducing poverty can directly affect infant brain development, said senior author, Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscience and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. "The brain changes speak to the remarkable malleability of the brain, especially early in childhood," she said. While the researchers can't rule out that differences seen in total brain activity in both groups were due to chance, they did find meaningful differences in the frontal region, linked with learning and thinking skills. Higher-frequency activity was about 20% greater in infants whose families received the larger payments. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The results suggest reducing poverty can directly affect infant brain development, said senior author, Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscience and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. "The brain changes speak to the remarkable malleability of the brain, especially early in childhood," she said. While the researchers can't rule out that differences seen in total brain activity in both groups were due to chance, they did find meaningful differences in the frontal region, linked with learning and thinking skills. Higher-frequency activity was about 20% greater in infants whose families received the larger payments. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:4, Insightful)
More money = Less displayed stress = more mentally healthy children.
Re: Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:3)
More money = more food and more experiences.
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More money = more food and more experiences.
Clearly, More Money => More Problems [wikipedia.org] ...
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More money = more food and more experiences.
Clearly, More Money => More Problems [wikipedia.org] ...
These are not necessarily contradictory. A small amount of novel problems is good for development.
Humans and other animals do not develop well in a sterile environment.
Too much stress and lack of nutrition is bad but not having any adversity is also bad.
Or as the saying goes: "Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times."
It's why children of rich parents tend to be spoiled and not be as successful or as resilient as their parents.
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Oh, right, everyone poor is on meth.
You slimy bigoted spoiled brat. You need to answer the door - your coke delivery is here.
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"...STOP having kids they can't afford?" (Score:4, Insightful)
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A certain population stability is needed for any system that does not just kill people when they become too old to be able to work. The US only managing the needed population stability via immigration, but that can't last forever since the rest of the world is starting to also have lower birthrates.
In sort, if you ever hope to be able to retire, you need people to have kids.
Re: Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:5, Informative)
More money = more food and more experiences.
Probably not more food so much as more nutritious food. Also, if that extra $300 per month allows the mother to not work as much, it could mean a higher rate of breastfeeding instead of formula, which could also boost IQ, not to mention greater time spent with the infant in general, resulting in greater stimulation, and thus greater brain development.
Re: Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah that might be more on point.
Having spent a bit of time on skid row after covid crashed the company I was at, and it taking a few months to find work again, eating as healthily as I was became almost impossible. It was just easier to eat fatty junk if I wanted to also evade homelessness by not paying rent.
Eventually i was able to switch to a quasi vegetarian diet, cutting meat down to once a week which brought down the expenses a lot, but it was tempting to just live on mcdonalds till the paychecks started coming down. All I can say is I was rather grateful for my local vietnamese greengrocer who decided I looked a bit poorly and sold me vegetables at half price.
My understanding is this is particularly egrarious in the US with quality vegetables and meat being somewhat less affordable than junk mcdonalds type food (Because seriously, your best way to eat healthy is to cook it yourself, the incentive not to pack it full of sneaky junk is a lot lower when its your own health on the line). I believe theres also a geographic factor as well with more cheap fast food options and less grocery options in poorer / low-working-class suburbs.
And I'm pretty sure, though I cant prove it, that poor diet is probably bad for cognitive development.
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Eating healthy seems to be ironically, pretty expensive, while eating crap is cheap - at least in this country. And poor diet leads to all kinds of complications - yet another example of the high cost of being poor.
Re: Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:4, Insightful)
It really depends. Eating healthy can either be a little expensive but requiring a lot of time, equipment, and knowledge, or it can just be expensive. If you cook for yourself, it's not that expensive, but you need the time, equipment, and knoweldge to do it. If you don't cook for yourself it's just expensive.
I can absoltuely cook tasty, healthy foods for less than it costs to go to McDonald's, but not if you factor my labor into the equation. Give me some cheap veg, a chicken carcass, some pasta or potatoes, and an hour or two and I'll make a killer soup for very little money.
The issue is that when you're poor the time, knoweldge, and equipment are often the things lacking. If you're trying to balance two jobs and child care, you don't necessarily have two hours to make soup. If you have the time but not the knowledge, taking the (small) gamble on trying to cook something new may also not be a good decision. If you're out of the house most of the time, food waste can be a big hit to the wallet.
On the knowledge side, I'd love to see high schools add in courses for basic cooking and financial literacy. I think both would make incredibly valuable improvements to the ability of people to fend for themselves. Just the basic skill of being able to prepare, cook, carve, and serve a whole chicken would save a lot of people a lot of money. Taking the carcass and making soup out of it would be a game changer for a lot of people. Knowing how to make a basic frittata or quiche would let people make cheap, healthy breakfasts. Add the financial literacy piece and even if people don't really like cooking, perhaps they'll at least realize how much money they are wasting eating crap.
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Also, if that extra $300 per month allows the mother to not work as much, it could mean a higher rate of breastfeeding instead of formula, which could also boost IQ, not to mention greater time spent with the infant in general, resulting in greater stimulation, and thus greater brain development.
It's very difficult to prove a causal relationship between breastfeeding and IQ. [fivethirtyeight.com]
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Also, if that extra $300 per month allows the mother to not work as much, it could mean a higher rate of breastfeeding instead of formula, which could also boost IQ, not to mention greater time spent with the infant in general, resulting in greater stimulation, and thus greater brain development.
It's very difficult to prove a causal relationship between breastfeeding and IQ. [fivethirtyeight.com]
That's true, but there actually is a reasonable medical explanation that can explain a difference. Breast milk contains immunoglobulin, which effectively transmits some of the mother's immunity to the child, training the child's T-cells with the antibodies that the mother produces. Children raised on breast milk, then, would have stronger immunity, which makes them healthier overall, and more likely to develop normally.
And at least in mouse models, there's evidence that T-cells play an important role in i [discovermagazine.com]
Re: Could it be lack of parental stress? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time == Money ... More money, more time to spend with kids.
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>More easy money = More babies that have very poor child care from poorly educated parents.
Overall the correlation is the opposite, less stress less pregnancies, better education.
On a planetary scale, the more "developed" the nation, the more opportunities, the lower the birth rates.
Poor Association (Score:5, Insightful)
Baby making amongst the poor is not in any way tied to monetary wealth, they wouldnt be having babies if that were the case. Meanwhile it's in all of ours best interest for those kids to turn out as best as possible.
Yeah it sucks paying for peoples kids they cant afford but it beats the only two alternatives I can think of which is government regulation of who can have kids and who can not or letting these kids grew up marginalized and then deal with the far more expensive crime problems later on down the line.
Me personally? I prefer the cheaper solution of making sure poor parents have enough money to raise their kids.
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> Baby making amongst the poor is not in any way tied to monetary wealth,
If I may say, nonsense. Wealth and fertility are often inversely correlated in the modern world, more because pregnancy absolutely screws career goals for women. When women stayed at home, and children worked in the family business, they were a better investment for the wealthy Now, for the poor, the difference between 2 baby-daddies paying child support and 3 baby daddies paying child support is more of a budget in the single mothe
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I prefer the cheaper solution of making sure poor parents have enough money
The cash transfers may be a cost-effective way to improve outcomes for low-come kids, but there is not enough information in the research paper to make that conclusion.
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there is not enough information in the research paper to make that conclusion.
Then we could run an social experiment and try it for a few decades.
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Kind of like WIC?
https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic [usda.gov]
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not really. WIC is for food.
The WIC program aims to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, and children up to age 5 who are at nutrition risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.
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It is one piece of what the federal government provides, there is also welfare, which is supposed to support people in these positions, and gives them money directly.
I was bringing up WIC because others, not in this thread, were specifically calling out the possibility of more money being good for more food, or better food, which is one of the goals of WIC, as you can only get certain foods on the program.
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Yeah it sucks paying for peoples kids they cant afford but it beats the only two alternatives I can think of which is government regulation of who can have kids and who can not or letting these kids grew up marginalized and then deal with the far more expensive crime problems later on down the line.
but... that's SOCIALISM! /s
I do find it strange that some many people cannot bring themselves to help people in need to prevent criminality when dealing with criminal behavior is far more expensive.
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What you are missing is that some of those people don't think it is a job of the government, when there are non-profits that do it much better, and are local.
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And what you are missing is that they are giant hypocrites who only favor social programs that deems worthy (because it impacts them) and condemn all the rest as socialism. It has nothing to do with efficiency and if non-profits were doing a sufficient job then this study wouldn't exist.
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Wow, the level of hostility you show is pretty incredible. Do you really believe that the federal government does things better than non-profits? I see no hypocrisy in any position we are talking about here, why do you jump to slamming the beliefs of someone you don't even know? As for how they do things currently, consider that the government took money from everyone to do these things, so it is the government, at least in the US, who is responsible for this. Before the government felt the need to do t
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It depends on the program you are referring to
* Corn is deeply and obscenely subsidized.
* Cattle ranchers are also deeply subsidized and many different ways.
that is more a function of government,
You don't think ensuring the well being of it's people should be a function of the government?
wouldn't make any sense at all as a private thing.
It makes just as much sense as your suggestion to leave the poor at the mercy of NGOs.
This should be the domain of private business. If it isn't worth it to run these things to these areas, maybe it shouldn't be done.
Most of the country wouldn't have electricity or phone lines. This is not an exaggeration either.
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IDK, I saw an opinion piece written that could address this issue. All children, upon birth, are given to the state and then given to the next set of parents on the list to receive a baby.
This way, you are still raising a baby but no one is raising their own biological child. This would very likely help with the wealth gap between the races, as you would be getting a lot more multi-cultural families.
It would mean that every child would be brought up at a certain standard, as you would need a certain income
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No. The correlation is quite definately the other way around. When humans get stressed, we fuck, and make babies.
You can see this at the population level with the phenomena that the poorer a population is, the higher its birth rate is.
Developed countries have strikingly low population replacement rates compared to developing countries. Good opportunities, a function of wealth, means women chose to delay motherhood to b
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More easy money = More babies that have very poor child care from poorly educated parents.
Better sexual education with focus on birth control, rather than on abstinence (the choice of organised superstition everywhere), good, cheap and easy access to e.g. condoms, as well as easy access to abortions if things fail, would help massively on that.
A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
mother’s age, completed maternal schooling, household income, net worth, general maternal health, maternal mental health, maternal race and ethnicity, marital status, number of adults in the household, number of other children born to the mother, maternal smoking during pregnancy, maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, father living with the mother, child’s sex, child’s birth weight, child’s gestational age at birth.
I think the line of inquiry is interesting, but I also think they only reason we're touting a relatively weak study is because it fits a narrative:
"Free money is good for babies. Governments should give away more free money."
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"Free" is a poisoned term. We know it's not free. It's money that society collectively spends to encourage a healthier population (and that equals a stronger and more competitive economy/society if putting it in terms of self-interest helps)
Re:A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:4, Insightful)
It's better than free. Spending there nets more in economic activity than just about anywhere else, well in excess of what we spend.
That's just in the short-term. Healthy babies means a smarter population and brighter futures.
It sounds crazy, but selfishness is rarely in ones own self-interest.
Re: A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:4, Informative)
You can deride any redistributive policy as "free money" but there's a pretty strong trend of evidence showing poverty can have a negative effect on brain development. [google.com] Reducing it by whatever means possible would have a net benefit for just about everyone. For every one "poor kid becomes success" there's dozens of wasted potential just due to circumstances they never had control over.
We also get the perk that as a country we can actually care about families as much as we like to just talk about it.
Poor people make great workers (Score:2)
That's why unemployment insurance is so insidious. When workers don't take the first job that comes along employers can't just fire higher paid workers and replace them instantly with desperate employees. Again, this means those employers have to pay more in wages, biting into profits and shareholder value.
The odd thing is
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The problem are the confounding factors. Poverty is tied to poorly educated parents, and drug use, and crime, and poor nutrition, and all sort of other things. It's not the lack of digits in a bank account that causes problems, it is some of those other factors.
Just as an anecdote: I was watching a documentary last night about an adult learning to read. Why did he not learn as a kid? Because he was poor - sure, that's true - but it's more that his mother had no time for or interest in his education, and h
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Yes, there are lot's of confounding factors and yes, there is always the case of correlation/causation but how much more data do we need to make a judgement here?
Education outcomes and poverty: Correlation
Crime and poverty: Correlation
Nutionion and poverty: Correlation
Drug use and poverty: Correlation
Stable family life and poverty: Correlation
Health outcomes and poverty: Correlation
At some point we have to accept that all the signs are pointing in the same direction and realize that being born into poverty
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Yes, and we're a better and more prosperous nation for it.
We're talking about a minuscule difference in brain activity, likely well within any reasonable margin of error one might apply to the results.
Are you sure about that? Because I'll bet that you didn't even glance at the study in question. I'll go even further and say that you really just don't like the idea of spending money to improve the lives of your fellow citizens.
That's short-sighted, you know. That spending improves your life as well.
Re: A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:2)
Sure, your wealthy abandoned man may have better odds of coming out ahead but in your scenario he has his wealthier upbringing, education, better diet, stable home life, cleaner air and water, less crime etc etc. He's already standing on 3rd base.
Take that same "wealthy man DNA" and pipe it into a poor mother's womb let's see how the odds go, or is it really all genetic?
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I guess I am.
However, I doubt personal responsibility and achievement values can hurt anything but the pride of those who choose not to succeed.
Re:A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there are existing studies on known factors, but unfortunately they are not being worked on, since it does not fit the narrative.
There is a strong correlation with single parenthood and poverty. In fact there is even observable difference between single fathers and single mothers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov] .
If we look at study, after study, the only reasonable conclusion would be ending the cycle of single parenthood trap. This would require understanding the reasons why family structures were broken, and then trying to repair them for a wealthier and healthier society. At least it would be what the science tells us.
However instead we focus on band aid solutions. US has the largest single parenthood rate among civilized societies, and among US sub-populations single parent families have the highest poverty rate. Why is this not ringing any alarm bells?
Re:A weak study, but strong on narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a direct result of the right's war on American families. If you want strong families, stop fighting against them!
- Pay a living wage so that it doesn't take two people working full-time just to make ends meet
- Stop discouraging sex education and birth control. Fund organizations like Planned Parenthood
- End the war on drugs, private prisons, and other "tough on crime" policies that do little to affect crime yet destroy lives. We are 4% of the worlds population, and have 25% of the world's prisoners. What isn't that ringing any alarm bells?
- Provide universal health care. Medical expenses are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US.
- Make college or trade school accessible to all who want it. That gives people real opportunity.
- Make housing accessible and affordable. (There's a lot to say here.)
If you want strong families, there's where you start.
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the left is explicitly anti-family.
"Explicity" eh? How do you figure? Because it really don't look that way. I can point to legislation that directly helps families that Republicans, as a unified whole, voted against. Can you do the same?
You'll talk about abortion, but ignore the health of the mother before the child is born. You'll work against institutions like Planned Parenthood that provide important prenatal services to women that help ensure a healthy baby and a safe delivery. You'll fight against giving women access to contracept
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However instead we focus on band aid solutions. US has the largest single parenthood rate among civilized societies, and among US sub-populations single parent families have the highest poverty rate. Why is this not ringing any alarm bells?
Because strong nuclear families was marked out as a right wing position decades ago. Therefore it cannot be the solution. It can't even be part of the solution. It would mean giving ground in the culture wars, politically impossible.
But worse than that is the fact that is a cultural issue, not a government or economic issue. There exists a significant difference in single parent family rates between sub-populations. If you accept what the data says about single family outcomes, then that would mean that mu
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"However instead we focus on band aid solutions. US has the largest single parenthood rate among civilized societies, and among US sub-populations single parent families have the highest poverty rate. Why is this not ringing any alarm bells?"
Because all men are evil and single motherhood is to be encouraged? This is the narrative presented to young women in the west. Heard it hundreds of times from them.
Then there's the second part of the plot - let the state educate and care for all kids and get rid of par
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Well, the study is nice in that it's at least randomized AND they're publishing all their data. It will be interesting to see if they find any effects in later papers.
Covid really did/does mess things up pretty badly for them. The strong influx of government money during the past two years (so basically years 2 and 3 of their 4 year study) will really attenuate the impact of the $313/month difference they're creating.
Also that they reasonably highlight in their paper the relatively weak strength of the fi
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"Free money is good for babies. Governments should give away more free money."
While that narrative is certainly being touted, there are other narratives that can be made.
It has long been considered taboo to give poor people money. It's more acceptable to give people things instead of cash. Unfortunately, what is offered is not necessarily what is needed. Avoiding cash gifts can create a massive bureaucracy [thisamericanlife.org] that stifles growth.
That's why I've moved away from charities that provide goods [wikipedia.org] to poor people. They best way to help poor people is the simplest way. Give them money. [npr.org]
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Bingo!
This is really an awfully "targeted" study if you think about it. I mean, they could simply try to analyze if (and if so, why) babies were cognitively better off when the mothers had more income. But framed this way, it's pretty clear they've got an agenda of trying to prove it's "good to redistribute wealth" with schemes paying basic minimum income even when a person does no work for it.
I can assure you that everyone I've ever met would be a little bit less stressed and probably eat a little bit he
causation and, you know, the other thing (Score:2)
Let's not put the cart before the baby here. Can we be certain that money causes smart babies? Or is it smart babies that bring in the money?
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Everything old is new again, I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
Who can imagine a situation where mom is allowed to relax during pregnancy? Possibly because someone else, a "partner" if you will, has a vested interest in taking care of her and the baby.
I feel as though that's familiar...just can't put my finger on it.
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And if mothers were not worried about parental leave damaging their careers.
Re:Everything old is new again, I suppose (Score:5, Insightful)
It would likely be best for babies if mothers would live in multi-generational homes where there's a dozen relatives nearby to help, as was done for almost all of history until the nuclear family destroyed that support system.
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Who can imagine a situation where mom is allowed to relax during pregnancy? Possibly because someone else, a "partner" if you will, has a vested interest in taking care of her and the baby.
I feel as though that's familiar...just can't put my finger on it.
Yep.
That was the majority, by far, when I was born.
Of course now we are enlightened, and Mom works of course, and as soon as possible after the birth she pays even poorer women to take care of her kid. Since you know, taking care of kids is so soul crushing that paying poorer women minimum wage to do it for you is the enlightened, woke thing to do.
So that is why⦠(Score:2)
Makes perfect sense to not do this then.
Centrally banked economies require a constant increase of unskilled workers or they collapse.
The best way to have unskilled workers is to make sure they cannot become skilled due to developmental delays and impairment.
Therefore, all of the industries, politicians, civic planners, and think tanks will be finding ways to ensure their position stays intact by preventing mothers from getting this kind of incentive.
It is so simple to figure out how to do things when your o
Multivariable Pregnancy Calculus (Score:3)
Being pregnant is stressful enough. Stressing about how to survive because you're financially strapped definitely won't help the cause.
It's not about making abortions illegal. It's about making the process of birth have meaning that abortions is truly the absolute last resort possible.
If all lives really matter, we should really ask what happens to the babies and their mothers after the birth.
Everyone always show up to pro-life rallies. No one ever show up after the mothers are discharged from the hospital.
But work expects mothers to show up at work.
How about that?
Re: Multivariable Pregnancy Calculus (Score:2, Troll)
Pregnancy is elective, women largely choose to become pregnant - it isn't an airborne virus randomly causing pregnancy.
Pregnancy is a choice, we know what causes it, and we know how to prevent it.
Re: Multivariable Pregnancy Calculus (Score:5, Insightful)
Pregnancy is elective
Not really. Republicans have been working overtime to make sure that women don't have any choice in the matter. Attacking sex education, limiting access to contraceptives, limiting or eliminating access to abortion services even in the of rape or incest, destroying important institutions like Planned Parenthood that did give girls access to information and contraception. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.
I haven't even talked about sexual assault, and the massive backlog of rape kits that police let sit in evidence for years without sending them to a lab, or the culture that discourages women from coming forward.
I also noticed that you wrote "women largely choose to become pregnant" which is telling. You put 100% of the responsibility on just one of the parties involved. You're pretty sick, you know that?
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Sad that your comment was modded troll.
Can someone explain, why are the Republicans so hell bent on people getting pregnant and carrying the child to term, at which point they lose all interest and don't want to support it.
I get the abortion argument, life starts at conception, but why the objection to sex education and contraception? I've heard that it's partly because they fear that knowing about sex will make people have sex... But as long as it's safe, what's the problem?
I am all for this. As long as there are no (Score:2)
This might help elsewhere (Score:2, Insightful)
My country claims to value life. Not so much in reality. After a person exits the womb, the US is actually pretty ruthlessly darwinian.
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but not in the US. At least not at the federal level. Half our voters think that any support for mothers is "welfare queen" and any money to help a child that wasn't earned working in a factory or on a farm is "socialism".
Probably because their parents didn't get enough money when they were infants. :-D
100% mod up (Score:2)
Notice there is not shortage of people to mod the above post down but somehow no one can mange a coherent argument against it.
Re: This might help elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
And, whatever we do provide, it’s cause half the voters tend towards something other than republican. If it were up to Trumpies and Tucker Carlson, we’d be living in a Dickens novel.
Re: This might help elsewhere (Score:5, Informative)
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I think you've proven that you don't know the first thing about the problem. Maybe you should keep your uninformed opinions to yourself?
Poverty sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that solving poverty at scale is really, really hard. Affluent, culturally cohesive countries in West Europe came closest to succeeding for a while and then immigration led to ethnically segregated multigenerational welfare enclaves with attendant social ills. Any money spent on welfare makes work less rewarding and traps people in continued welfare. People make choices, such as becoming single mothers, based on aid being available. Work serves as connection to society and an incentive to be
Re:Poverty sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that solving poverty at scale is really, really hard. Affluent, culturally cohesive countries in West Europe came closest to succeeding for a while and then immigration led to ethnically segregated multigenerational welfare enclaves with attendant social ills. Any money spent on welfare makes work less rewarding and traps people in continued welfare.
This is, in large part, because most welfare-like programs stop paying you if you work. That turns those programs into incentives to not work. That shouldn't occur if you pay everyone and then tax it back progressively.
If anything, for people living in poverty, a universal basic income scheme should actually increase the incentive to work, because almost all of their employment income would go towards buying things that they want, rather than towards keeping a roof over their heads and putting food on the table.
People make choices, such as becoming single mothers, based on aid being available.
I would flip that wording around and say that people make choices, such as choosing to not abort their children, based on aid being available. I, for one, would rather see that aid be available, given the most likely alternative.
Work serves as connection to society and an incentive to be well groomed, nice and useful to others while lack of work breeds entitlement and bad behavior.
If anything, I rather suspect it's the other way around — that entitled people with bad behavior don't seek out work. They tend to think that work is beneath them, and actively seek out ways to get the things that they want without having to work for them. Again, at least in the medium to long term, a UBI should significantly reduce that problem by increasing the relative benefit obtained from even low-level employment, thus making it harder to rationalize theft, drug dealing, etc. as a way out of abject poverty.
Also, in an ideal world, every employer, regardless of size, should be required to offer a 401k with some reasonable amount of matching. That, in combination with a UBI, would go a long way towards ending poverty in the long term.
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This is, in large part, because most welfare-like programs stop paying you if you work. That turns those programs into incentives to not work. That shouldn't occur if you pay everyone and then tax it back progressively.
?
Even taxing the rich or the corporations shrinks non-welfare economy to grow welfare economy, making it more difficult and less rewarding to participate in the former than otherwise.
Ostensibly it shrinks the "non-welfare economy", whatever the heck that is, but not by enough to notice. The key is phasing out the benefits slowly enough that most of the burden is paid by people earning higher incomes, the people in the middle don't notice it one way or the other, and people at the bottom are pushed up enough to benefit significantly.
Also, UBI style support skews career choices towards less needed professions - more poets, fewer plumbers.
Plumbers make a good living because there aren't nearly enough of them. If there were fewer plumbers, that would drive up the cost of their services, which
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Ok, thanks for a well reasoned argument. I suppose predicting what women, criminals and other groups will do for sure is not straightforward, although I do believe US and Europe anti-poverty programs provided ample examples of pessimistic scenarios, especially absent strong cultural cohesion to counterbalance perverse incentives of welfare.
I guess my most key point is that giving money to a small group of people does not have the same effects as giving money to lots of people. Even if you tax the wealthy, l
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I guess my most key point is that giving money to a small group of people does not have the same effects as giving money to lots of people. Even if you tax the wealthy, luxury spending as such is a tiny fraction for US economy. So the tax reduces investment, or upper middle class spending money on services of the poor. Meaning in turn that fewer companies get financed and hire people and remaining jobs become less rewarding and harder to advance in.
For the most part, people hire people because they need to get something done, and that demand doesn't go away just because the price goes up. The demand for labor tends to not be particularly dependent on the cost of that labor, with the exception of laborers working in certain luxury industries, which makes the cost of labor largely supply-driven. The only reason that basic labor isn't a lot more expensive is because the bottom end of the labor pool doesn't realize how much power they would have if they
Re:Poverty sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh fuck off. No mother becomes a single mother because of welfare, single parenthood is the last thing anyone wants regardless of benefits. What a fucking hack you are.
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We like to believe people are somehow nice.
But people have killed their children in honour killings. ...
People have sold their children into indentured servitude/slavery.
People have sold their children into prostitution.
People have killed their children because they don't want them and don't want anyone else to have them.
To suggest no 'poor woman' ever thought of the potential gain from child welfare benefits would be to severely underestimate the reality of humanity.
What percentage of people are exploitati
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I don't mean anything so drastic as a common case. More like - nobody gets corona on purpose, but people obviously will go to greater length to avoid Delta if they are unvaccinated than to avoid Omicron if they had 3 Pfizer shots. In the same way, if society is financially and morally geared towards children raised by two parents living together, potential parents will prioritize communication about their plans in case of a pregnancy or mutual desire to avoid that. On the other hand, if community has little
This will probably be ordinary (Score:3)
There are basically two types of positive IQ interventions. One type removes harmful factors. The other introduces new positive factors.
Removing negative factors has long-term effects, but I don't think it would show up as boosted brain activity at age 1. That suggests that this is in the second category. This category includes things like playing classical music while the baby is still in the womb, and all of the other fads down the centuries. It also, as far as I can tell, includes what I consider "good parenting" practices, like reading to your kids, exposing them to lots of new things, etc.
Current research suggests that this type of intervention has very little long term effect, close enough to none to be hard to tell apart. It does, however, have short term effects - it pulls future brain development forward, without changing the eventual end point.
To be clear, I think that many of these efforts have strong positive effects on the child's life that don't show up on IQ tests. But if I had to guess, I'd say it is unlikely that these gains would be measurable past age 13 or so. Maybe 15.
I don't know if the researchers are planning to keep in touch with them for that long, but it would be nice if they did. Even as underpowered as this study is, I'd like to see the data 20 years from now.
(FYI, I'm almost exclusively talking about IQ as a group property here, and not an individual one.)
Pay to Read? (Score:2)
How about we conduct this experiment a second time, over a longer time span like 10 years.
We also directly pay mommy and especially daddy - $20 for every single time they read to their child.
I'd like to see the differences in their school years when they actually get brain food. Obviously the hard part is getting people to spend time with their kids in a productive setting and not simply lie about the book reading.
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How about we conduct this experiment a second time, over a longer time span like 10 years.
That is much too long. IQ is largely fixed by the time they start school, barring any major negative events.
Most environmental effects are during pregnancy, followed by infancy.
It would be interesting to revisit the kids in a fews years though, when they've started school, and see if there is any discernible effect.
We also directly pay mommy and especially daddy - $20 for every single time they read to their child.
That will not work. Studies have shown correlations with child IQ and books in the house. But whether parents actually read to them does not matter much.
And even there, what is left is still her
Correlation/causation: Change or chance? (Score:3)
Are we all content to ignore this part?
""the researchers can't rule out that differences seen in total brain activity in both groups were due to chance""
Or is every other commenter taking the old familiar TL;DR approach?
RTFA, for pete's sake!!!
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RTFA, for pete's sake!!!
RTFA? Try reading the rest of the sentence you quoted from. "for pete's sake!!!"
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I can only speak for myself but research like this is just the first look to see if there is anything there to investigate further. Normally scientists don't start with an expensive, in-depth study. They do a smaller, cheaper one and see if there is any suggestion that spending more money is worthwhile.
Therefore I refrained from making the usual "this study isn't rigorous enough, the results are flawed" type comment. I'm glad to see others did too.
Best use of money there could be (Score:3)
The real problem here (Score:2)
Brain activity? (Score:2)
Is that a good thing? Bad thing? Why not just do IQ tests or something that is objectively good.
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Is that a good thing? Bad thing? Why not just do IQ tests or something that is objectively good.
You cannot do IQ tests on babies. But it would be helpful to do that in a follow-up a few years from now.
Easy (Score:2)
The increased brain activity is because of the meth that travels to the baby through breastmilk
Commies! (Score:2)
Research Also Shows (Score:2)
Giving cash to me will make your baby love you more.
We measured brain activity in babies after their parents gave me money, and 120 out of 300 babies scored in the top 40th percentile in the Love Mommy part of the brain, which is well-above average.
Opposed by GQP- voters thinking is bad (Score:2)
Thinking voters means no more GQP, so will be opposed as a concept.
Probably... (Score:2)
Probably just a consequence of more meth fumes in the air.
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That's your take-away? Where to begin...
Food subsidies are insufficient for a lot of families. They lean on other programs, like food banks, to get through the month already. So why is there an underground market?
If you weren't so blinded by your hatred of poor people, you could figure it out. That market exists because poor people have expenses other than food. Shocking, I know.
Here's how it works, for anyone who doesn't already know. The person buying food stamps goes shopping with the person selli
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The problem with EBT isn't who it's given to, but how it's designed. You spend $250 on food by the end of the month or you lose it. Personally I only spend $115 a month on food, so if I were on EBT I'd have to decide between feeling like I'm burning money that was handed to me, or splurging needlessly on overpriced food I don't want, or engaging with the black market. I like to think I'd choose the first option, but people who are in a desperate financial situation won't -- they see they can cash in the exc
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Those babies are what is going on and think to themselves, "how can I get in on that free welfare money?"
Indeed. The conclusion to draw is that those who think of this as "free welfare money" are babies.
Re: Well of course (Score:2)
More likely the ones from whom the "free" money is sourced.
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