A 2015 study from Harvard and MIT performed brain imaging on a group of 12- and 13-year-olds, and found those from lower-income families had thinner brain cortex around key intellectual areas. Further, a 2015 study published in Nature Neuroscience, “Family Income, Parental Education and Brain Structure in Children and Adolescents,” analyzed brain surface area — a measure different than cortical thickness — of 1,099 persons from ages 3 to 20 and correlated that with socioeconomic status, representing the largest study of its kind to date. More than two dozen researchers, led by Kimberly G. Noble of Columbia University, performed brain imaging and looked at relationships with household income levels, as well as education levels of the subjects’ parents.
The study found that family income was associated with greater brain surface area, and that the relationship was especially substantial for lower-income children:
“For every dollar in increased income, the increase in children’s brain surface area was proportionally greater at the lower end of the family-income spectrum.”
The researchers could only speculate about the precise reasons for the link between income status and brain structure; they suggested it might stem from “family stress, cognitive stimulation, environmental toxins or nutrition, or from corresponding differences in the prenatal environment.”
The researchers concluded that “policies targeting families at the low end of the income distribution may be most likely to lead to observable differences in children’s brain and cognitive development.” The researchers were careful to note that these differences in the brains of poor children were not “immutable,” and that there were variations within all income categories.
Still, the correlation is profoundly consequential, not just for the children themselves, but for an American future that will require the participation and talent of all of our citizens.
There are all kinds of arguments for a living wage–fundamental fairness, the amelioration of social unrest, the fact that economic growth requires growing the number of consumers with disposable income, the fact that taxpayers end up subsidizing the bottom lines of major companies paying poverty wages. But this research provides another compelling reason to increase the incomes of poor working families.
As a country, we give a lot of lip service to children’s wellbeing. We need to put our money where our mouths are.
A couple of days ago, a group of Indiana Pastors gathered at the Statehouse to deliver a long letter accusing the Governor and legislators of “betrayal” for amending RFRA to include a modicum of civil rights protections for LGBT Hoosiers.
I encourage readers to click through and read the letter in its entirety, because it is a (rather chilling) window into a world in which words like “liberty” mean something very different from their meaning in the world I inhabit.
This “fixed” RFRA legislation has opened the door to a trampling of our liberties….You received godly counsel from strong and knowledgeable leaders from across our nation who encouraged you to stand strong and to veto this legislation. You failed. In doing so, you betrayed the trust of millions of Hoosiers who elected you to protect the liberties we hold dear….
You state that you are committed to an Indiana where religious rights and individual rights coexist in harmony. While this sounds wonderful, we all know that the demands of the LGBT lobby make this untenable with those who profess faith in Christ and faithfulness to the Scriptures. It was clear from the press conference that the next “discussion” will involve the creation of sexual orientation and gender identity as a special protected class in Indiana. Leadership from the gay community told all who were listening that this will become a reality in Indiana….
God’s Word is very clear about the proper expression of human sexuality, and homosexuality is one of a variety of sexual behaviors God expressly condemns. For Christians, therefore, sexual sins can never be treated as civil rights.
There is much, much more.
Let me be clear: drawing a line between the right of people to the free exercise of their belief systems–no matter how foreign or even repugnant those beliefs may be to other Americans–and the civil rights of their fellow citizens is not simple, nor is the placement of that line uncontested. The Pastors’ letter highlights a consistent and probably unavoidable tension in an America that values both liberty and equality.
That said, the letter vividly demonstrates the worldview of would-be theocrats who believe they speak for God– who believe they have the right to demand laws that privilege their beliefs and impose them on everyone else, and who believe that failure to occupy that privileged legal position victimizes them.
The Indiana General Assembly is finally going home, concluding a session which most sane Hoosiers couldn’t wait to see come to an end. There was plenty of bad policy to go around (RFRA, anyone?) but–as has become typical during the Pence Administration– city schools took the greatest hit. The final budget slashed funding for urban public schools in districts serving the poorest populations, while raising amounts for rural, charter and voucher schools.
Once again, the legislature took money from the state’s most strapped public schools to increase funding for Pence’s ill-considered voucher program–currently one of the most extensive in the nation. Indiana has close to 30,000 students receiving public funds to attend private schools, some 80% of which are religious.
To add insult to injury, lawmakers also took oversight of voucher schools away from Superintendent Glenda Ritz, and moved it to the Governor’s office. According to the Indianapolis Star
A proposal was slipped in the state’s new $31.5 billion budget without public debate, moving calculation of school voucher costs from Ritz’s Department of Education to Pence’s board and shifts control over which schools qualify to receive vouchers.
If anyone thinks Pence’s office is competent to do either job, I have a bridge to sell you…
Whatever one thinks of charter schools, at least they remain part of the public system. Vouchers are another thing altogether. There are plenty of reasons to object to the growth of the state’s voucher program–vouchers bleed money from the public schools, have been shown to re-segregate students, and give parents choices without providing them with the information they need in order to inform those choices. (In Louisiana, a significant percentage teach creationism and other “biblical truths.”) Most also fail to deliver.
Proponents defend vouchers as a means of escape from “failing” public schools; the obvious implication/promise is that students will receive a better education in the private schools to which they take those vouchers.
The evidence does not support that promise.
According to a report from the bipartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in Chicago, school choice in Indiana is “designed to funnel taxpayer money to private schools, with little evidence that demonstrates improved academic achievement for students who are most at risk.” The study compared Indiana’s program with those in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. – some of the oldest voucher programs in the country – where they say they found similar results.
The study replicates several others that have been conducted since “school choice” programs became the easy answer to struggling schools.
Virtually all scholars who have examined the performance of voucher schools have concluded that academic gains range from none to minimal. The single improvement that has been documented is parental satisfaction; when parents feel they have had a choice, they are more empowered and exhibit more positive attitudes.
Hoosier taxpayers are paying a lot for that parental satisfaction.
The vast majority of Hoosier children, who remain in public schools being purposely drained of necessary resources in order to support private (mostly religious) education, are paying a lot more.
Yesterday’s blog bemoaned the skepticism–and the sound reasons for that skepticism– with which so many of us have come to view media reports. A couple of commenters noted what we might call “the flip side” of that phenomenon–people distrustful of both government and the media who are anything but skeptical when it comes to wild and crazy conspiracy theories.
If you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a large military exercise around the country from July 15th to September 15th. It’s called Jade Helm 15 because all military trainings have names and that one wasn’t taken, I suppose. Texas has five counties involved and the rightwing is damn sure that it means Obama is taking over and gonna put all them in a concentration camp Just! Like! Hitler!
The post included a local newspaper’s report of a public meeting in Bastrop County, where the exercise was to take place.
Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria answered questions for two hours from a crowd of more than 150 people at a special meeting of the Bastrop County Commissioners, hoping to allay locals’ concerns that the training operation is a way for the federal government to take over Texas and much of the Southwest. Instead, Lastoria was told that he couldn’t be trusted and was asked whether Jade Helm 15 will involve bringing foreign fighters from the Islamic State to Texas, whether U.S. troops will confiscate Texans’ guns and whether the Army intends to implement martial law through the exercise. (The answer for all three was no.)
As Juanita Jean noted,
Cowboy! Think about it. If the military wanted to take over, they would not ask your permission first. They would just do it because I do not care a hill of beans how many guns you have, they have tanks. And bombers. And stuff you have never even heard of.
How lost and terrified must people be in order to believe things like this? How paranoid?
And how much do they have to hate having an African-American President?
Newsweek recently ran an article arguing that wind power really costs more than people think. The story’s italicized tagline identified the author thusly: “Randy Simmons is professor of political economy at Utah State University.”
A respectable (and presumably reliable) credential. As the Daily Kos reported, however,
The Erik Wemple Blog yesterday asked Simmons whether his Newsweek blast at wind power should have contained more information about his ties to some key players in the U.S. energy sector. For instance, between 2008 and 2013, Simmons served as the Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy from 2008 to 2013, in what he terms a “fixed-term professorship.” And Simmons currently supervises a program known at Utah State University as the “Koch Scholars” program, which runs on an annual grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. It’s a “reading group” that meets on Tuesday evenings. “The Koch Foundation grant buys the books, and food and provides a scholarship for each of the 15 students chosen that semester,” writes Simmons in an e-mail to the Erik Wemple Blog.
Surely the Koch’s major fossil fuel holdings and generous underwriting had no effect upon Simmons’ research conclusions. (If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.)
When special interests can “buy” (or at least influence) presumably objective research results, is it any wonder that all research is viewed with skepticism?
In an environment where everything is suspect, it becomes so easy to engage in “confirmation bias”–to believe those sources that confirm our preferred worldview, and to dismiss contrary evidence.
A few years ago, I wrote a book called Distrust, American Style, arguing that constant revelations about corrupt practices in so many major institutions of American life–not just government, but also major league sports, the Catholic Church’s molestation scandals, big business (Enron, Worldcon, et al)–had eaten away the fabric of trust needed in order for society to function. That was before the ubiquity of cell phone cameras had given us evidence of pervasive police misconduct, before stories emerged about phony FBI forensic testimony, before the “banksters” and the Great Recession they triggered…the list goes on.
Democratic governments require a robust civil society in order to function properly. Civil society requires social capital. Social capital–our connection to one another–requires trust and reciprocity.
