RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] speaking of apocalyptic horsemen...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Mike Miller wrote:

> What's happening in the modern world:  The best-educated women are
> delaying childbirth so that they can complete their educations.  Then
> they are limiting the number of their offspring so that they can get
> more work done, make more money and focus more attention on their small
> numbers of children.  This could be considered 'rational' because
> limiting reproduction helps them to attain desired goals, but it could
> be considered 'irrational' because they are (from a biologists point of
> view) reducing their fitness when they don't have to.

OK, so now I'm not sure I buy this argument, for a lot of reasons. At a
minimum, one would want to know how many children the best-educated women
had in previous generations.  And my best guess on that one is: not very
many.  So if you looked at the number of kids had by women who had or did
not have (say) Bachelor's degrees now and in 1950 and compared changes in
fertility rates in those two groups, you might get a better idea of what
might need explaining.  My guess is that rates have gone down for almost
everybody but the underclass and the best educated women.  (And, yes, I
know that "well-educated" is not a genotype.)

I think another interesting point is that it seems clear that mating among
humans is not even close to random.  I'm pretty sure these days you are
seeing many more marriages where both partners are really smart than in
the past; people are way more mobile than they used to be and more
educated people are a lot less likely to marry somebody who is not very 
much like them but did happen to grow up in the same town.  The number of
really, really smart kids might then be higher than in the past.  
(Especially in places like the US, where we make an effort to "import" 
everybody else's really smart people.)

The third point, connected to the second, is the extent to which this huge 
non-randomness of mating has led us to situations where it might not make 
as much sense to compare fertility rates of the educated versus the 
non-educated.  So the rates might be lower among the educated, but the 
amount of meaningful interaction you're seeing these days between groups 
that differ in even so crass a variable as income is a lot less than you
might guess.

My worry actually is a lot less about any concern that well-educated women 
are having fewer kids than it is about the incredibly fast rate at which
income and opportunity inequalities are developing in this country.  I 
do not think that the status quo is especially sustainable, and, like 
Russell Horn, I believe the action that merits real interest is what can
be done to improve the lives of people who are falling further and further
behind in any way you'd like to count.

jking

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