An obligation to have children?

A recent book by a philosopher, David Benatar, says that we do not believe that people have an obligation to have children.  (I haven't read the book--this is from a review in the New Yorker).  Ross Douthat wonders who this "we" is--he says that the idea that people have an obligation to have children "has been a commonplace and intuitive part of folk morality in most cultures in human history," although it has become "unfashionable ... in certain circles in the West."  I think he's right about most cultures, but was struck by the "certain circles."  That suggests that he think it remains "part of folk morality" among ordinary people in the West. 

There are not many questions on this subject--the most relevant one is from a 1991 Associated Press survey.  The question is "I'm going to read you some words or phrases people have used to describe couples married for several years who have no children.  And I'm going to ask you how well each one describes childless couples."  One of the words is "selfish."  Overall 19% said it described childless couples well and 75% did not.  Less educated and older people were more likely to agree, but even among people over 50 who did not graduate from high school, only 32% did.  Neither party preference, living in an urban area, or region of the country made much (if any) difference.  So "certain circles" appear to extend pretty widely.  At least they did in 1991--it would be interesting to see if the issue has become more politicized since then.

PS:  Slightly over half of people who were separated agreed, far more than any other marital status (the next highest was married, at 21%).  Only about 50 people in the sample were separated, but the differences were still statistically significant.  Maybe a lot of separations are because of disagreement over whether to have children? 

Job Satisfaction

Many surveys have found that 80-90 percent of people say they are satisfied with their jobs. Recently I saw a reference to one that found a much lower level of satisfaction. According to the Conference Board, "only 45 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs, which is a marked drop from the more than 61 percent who said they were satisfied in 1987."  They gave no detail about their survey, and I wasn't curious enough to spend $395 for the full report, but I found a Washington Post story that gave a little detail.  They ask people to rank their satisfaction at work on a scale of 1-5, and the 45% refers to people who rated their job a 4 or 5.  So possibly there are a lot of people who pick an intermediate response (3) to this question, but say they are satisfied when forced to make a yes/no choice ("can't complain").  The Washington Post story also said that the survey was based on a mail-in questionnaire, and it's possible that people who aren't happy are more motivated to send it in. 

I looked for questions on job satisfaction using a similar format--ones that asked people to pick a number without attaching labels to it.  There aren't many.  You have to go back to 1984 for a Gallup survey that asked people to pick a number from 1-10.  In that survey, 64% chose 7-10, and 18% chose 4-6.  The most common response was 10 (24%), and then the percentages tapered off pretty steadily.  So it doesn't seem like there are a lot of people in the middle.   

PS:  The 1984 Gallup survey asked half of the sample a standard "would you say you are satisfied or dissatisfied" question:  70% said yes, and 20% said no, which is a lower level of satisfaction than what is usually found.  With both forms of the question, about 10% said they didn't know, which I find surprisingly high--it seems like the kind of thing almost everyone would have an opinion on. 

Conspiracies

There has been some debate lately about whether conservatives are more inclined to believe in conspiracy theories than liberals.  You can cite examples on both sides, but then you get into questions of deciding exactly how irrational different beliefs are (sometimes there really are conspiracies).  So I have sometimes looked for questions about non-political conspiracies.  I didn't have much success until a few days ago, when I found a question about the Janet Jackson's performance at Super Bowl 2004:  "Based on what you have read or heard, do you think that executives at CBS, the network that aired the Super Bowl, knew in advance that Janet Jackson’s breast would be exposed during the halftime show, or do you think they were unaware that this would happen?"  About 19% did, 72% did not, and 8% said they didn't know.  There weren't may group differences:  education, race, age, gender, and party preference didn't seem to matter.  Hispanics were more likely to think they knew (31%).  There was no difference between liberals and conservatives, but ideology made a difference:  29% of the people who said they were "very liberal" or "very conservative" thought that they knew, compared to 21% of those who called themselves liberal or conservative and 17% of those who called themselves moderate.

More missing data

A few years ago, I looked for data on corruption in the states.  I thought there would be something along the lines of Transparency International's data for different countries, which are based on surveys of people who have done business in those places.  To my surprise, I couldn't find anything.  The other day, I saw a story about the State Integrity Investigation, which ranked states on having and enforcing anti-corruption measures.   That reminded me that I had once seen two questions on public opinion from the 1930s that seemed relevant.  One asked "does politics play a part in the handling of relief in your locality"; the other, "should government positions . . . be given to those who help put their political party into office or those who receive the highest marks in civil service examinations?"  The rankings on the these two measures are almost completely uncorrelated, but here are the top and bottom on each ("top" as states in which people think that politics plays a part and more people think that positions should go to those who help their party).  The rankings on whether people thought that politics played a part are a reasonably good match with my (vague) impressions about the comparative corruption of the states.  The main factor for opinions about whether jobs should go to those who help their party was region:  that opinion was more popular in the South and border states. 

Politics                      Help Party

Arkansas                      Mississippi

Louisiana                     Delaware

New Jersey                    Alabama

W. Virginia                   Kentucky

Rhode Island                  Virginia

....

N. Dakota                      New Hampshire

Colorado                       Oregon

Utah                           Vermont

Kentucky                       Rhode Island

Vermont                        Arizona

Reagan's reputation

As many people have noticed, the Republican candidates for president have praised Ronald Reagan and said very little about other Republican presidents, even popular ones (it's a long time since I heard anyone claim to be an "Eisenhower Republican").  Even Democrats, notably Barack Obama, have said some positive things about him in recent years.  When did this start?  A number of surveys, mostly Gallup, have asked "How do you think Ronald Reagan will go down in history--as an outstanding president, above average, average, below average, or poor?"  (have did not mention "average" as an option but allowed people to volunteer it, and one asked for a rating of his "leadership" qualities, but there was no evidence that these differences affected the responses).  Here is a figure showing his average score, using +2.....-2 for the different responses.  

 

 His low point was July 1987, when he was under criticism for a variety of reasons, especially the Iran-Contra affair (on July 13, 1987 the New York Times ran a story entitled "GOP Hopefuls Backing Away from Reagan,' which makes interesting reading today).  His reputation had bounced back by the time he left office, and unfortunately there was a four-year gap before it was asked again.  At that time, he was almost back to his 1987 low, but since then it's been steady improvement:  each of the last four times it's been asked, he's set a new high.  I wonder if that's a common pattern, or something unique to Reagan. 

The life of the mind

In 1978, a CBS/NY Times poll asked "If you had children in college, do you think it would be more important for them to get a well-rounded education, or more important for them to get training for a well-paying job?"  30% went for a well-rounded education, 59% for training, with 7% volunteering both or neither and 4% not sure.  In 1997, CBS asked an almost identical question (the only difference was that it said "a child" instead of "children."  51% chose a well-rounded education, 40% chose training, with 6% both/neither and 3% not sure.  That's a big change for an issue of this kind

Coming together

As I mentioned in my last post, Charles Murray holds that social class differences in intelligence are increasing.  The General Social Survey has measures of vocabulary knowledge, which is a surprisingly good measure of IQ, and occupation.  The GSS computes "occupational prestige" scores from a person's occupation.  I computed a measure of the gap between classes (the coefficient in a regression of prestige on vocabulary score.  The results:

 That looks like a clear decline, not an increase.  In fairness, I should point out that they changed the prestige scores (indicated by the different colors) and based on the two years for which they computed both, the relationship is weaker with the second form.  If you adjust for that, then the evidence for a decline becomes weaker.  But no matter how you look at it, the relationship isn't getting stronger.   While this is just a quick analysis based on one short test, Herrnstein and Murray's case was just a plausible story illustrated with some anecdotes.  I haven't read Murray's new book yet, but unless he's found some better evidence, it seems like intelligence is one way in which America is not coming apart.