1. All humans are somewhat impulsive, but the degree of impulsiveness varies.
2. On average, impulsiveness causes poverty. The greater the impulsiveness, the greater the poverty. So the very poor tend to be highly impulsive.
3. In traditional societies, however, social pressure and stigma against impulsive behavior sharply reduce their incidence. Teens like unprotected sex, but fear social suicide.
4. In the 1960s, social pressure and stigma against single motherhood started to deteriorate for largely cultural – not economic – reasons. (While the expansion of the welfare state was one notable economic factor, it wasn’t decisive).
This is similar to Charles Murray’s sociology. Both Caplan and Murray see the cultural changes of the last several decades as removing some of the social guardrails. People with strong character traits kept driving down the middle of the road, but people with weaker character traits crashed into telephone poles by having children out of wedlock.
One element that appears to be central to Caplan’s sociology is the trait of conscientiousness. He sees this trait as predicting success. He sees college completion as a signal of conscientiousness, which explains how college graduates can earn a salary premium without necessarily acquiring any skills in college. He sees poverty as caused by impulsiveness, which is the opposite of conscientiousness.
Others, notably Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan, claim that causality runs from poverty to low conscientiousness. Poverty is a stressor that makes it more difficult for people to make good decisions.
Is low conscientiousness an innate trait or a trait caused by stressful circumstances? I am skeptical of the latter view. Probably the most stressed people would be new immigrants. Yet immigrants are often highly conscientious. Perhaps this is a selection phenomenon (it takes a lot of conscientiousness to get to another country). But even if it is a selection phenomenon, that shows that innate qualities can dominate external circumstances.
Why would you think the causal arrow can only go one way? Lots of effects are self-reinforcing.
Also, I would add security to the list of plausible causes. If the rewards of conscientiousness are likely to be stolen, there’s not much reason to be conscientious.
Having said that, my understanding of the relevant literature supports your view that innate qualities are likely to be a dominant factor, especially over time.
Like most nature vs. nurture debates, I think the answer is that it is a complex interaction between the two. The feedback loops cause a virtuous circle in the high-end and a vicious circle in the low-end of the innate conscientiousness distribution.
The question is whether there exists effective interventions/policies to amplify the effects of the virtuous circle and dampen the effects of the vicious circle for the greater good of society.
people with weaker character traits crashed into telephone poles by having children out of wedlock.
So we should be celebrating both the decline in crime since 1990 and single motherhood since 2008! Some of this is teenage sex has dropped as well. Divorce rates have had a slow decline since 1981. Heck High School Graduation rates are increasing! Society is getting better everyday! So why aren’t conservatives celebrating younger generation then? Many of these signal we entering a Golden Age!
However, I believe Murray and Caplan correctly identified Bell Curve problem but really hate Singapore Solution though. Which young people are increasingly better behaved and doing the right things which means….They are a lot more careful about family formation and having less kids while married later. And they getting more education instead of crime and babies. (Honestly, Murray getting a divorce clued me in what young people are doing…They are getting married later when they are ready at 31 instead of marrying at 23 with a higher chance of divorce.)
So the Bell Curve optimal society is Singapore and South Korean but they have an incredibly low birth rate.
But young people see they did all the right things and achieving more milestones then ever to find society is not ready to give them the good life.
(Caplan reads like his dream society is London in 1865 when most working class were dead by 50.)
“So the Bell Curve optimal society is Singapore and South Korean but they have an incredibly low birth rate.”
“6. People with low impulsiveness continued to avoid single motherhood despite declining traditionalism, hence their continued rarity among the middle and upper classes.”
The upper classes solved their increased divorce risk by retreating from risk taking behavior entirely, at the expense of future generations (and themselves to the extent people enjoy having children). That’s a cost of social breakdown too, even if not as dramatic as a pregnant teenager.
I would disagree that the upper middle class is becoming more rare today than in decades past. There are as many of them today than the 1990s and the 1980s while especially than anytime before 1980. Also, if the upper middle makes it because they smart and cautious, then they are smart and cautious about family formation. It is two sides of the same coin!
And again for all the complaints of young, most measures of society are significant than 1970, 1980 and 1990. It is big deal Teen Pregnancy is 35% less compared to 1990 or crime is half. (I know it has not occurred in every city.) Modern young people are behaving better than ever but that also means they starting families later.
Anyway, my favorite reality of Caplan’s writing is:
1) He always Marx’s point that capitalism needs Puritanical Religion to keep poor people in line.
2) He thinks poor people are bad and stupid, but our economy needs a lot more of them.
“There are as many of them today than the 1990s and the 1980s while especially then anytime before 1980. ”
If TFR for a group is significantly below 2.1, then this statement is obviously false.
“smart and cautious about family formation”
Cautious maybe. Smart? I don’t think there is anything smart about having such a dysfunctional mating market that you can’t even reproduce yourself.
“Anyway, my favorite reality of Caplan’s writing is:
1) He always Marx’s point that capitalism needs Puritanical Religion to keep poor people in line.
2) He thinks poor people are bad and stupid, but our economy needs a lot more of them.”
Steve Sailer had that pinned long ago 😛
1) There is class mobility as well that make up for some of the low birth rates! So 60% of Upper Middle Class were born UMC and 40% moved there from another class. They are not disappearing the last 3 decades.
2) How is the mating market more dysfunctional when divorce rates are dropping? Seems like the mating markets were more dysfunctional in 1960s to me! Most stats show later life marriage lowers divorce and I suspect there are probably 10 good reasons for this.
3) Less children smart? Well having children is smart for the individual family but not for society. This sounds a like the good Professor focusing on micro-decision versus macro-decisions. And the US is behind most other nations here as I see this in South Korea, Singapore, Germany, etc.
“1) There is class mobility as well that make up for”
The lower classes don’t have the IQ for their offspring to replace the upper class with genetically equal replacements.
If you replenish by raiding the third world for its smart fraction (the Singapore solution) that is also unsustainable.
2) The purpose of mating market is to get married and have kids. If you aren’t doing that, you’re failing.
3) It’s a huge global problem. Here’s hoping we get genetic engineering soon because if not we are fucked.
Oddly enough Caplan sounds as pollyanish for libertarians as socialist ideologues.
He is disappointed that we don’t have a purtanical libertarian economy anymore that young people are not forced to stay married unhappily and have loads of babies to grow the economy. Can some young people marry? Yes many do! But statistically divorce rates are lowest for marriages with couple between 28 – 30*. What we got was the Singapore Solution where young people are increasingly careful on family formation to control society bad behavior. And note the real big change in the US since 2008, is the birth rates of Hispanic-Americans and African-Americans are falling closer to the white populations.
*There are probably plenty reasons for this and I would like to see a study to try to parse it out.
“puritanical libertarian economy”
Huh?
“young people are not forced to stay married unhappily”
Well, you need to be married first before you can be married unhappily.
Maybe the question to ask is why people find it so hard to get and stay married.
I don’t think the single motherhood statistics are worthy of celebrating yet.
In 2017 32% of all children are living with an unmarried parent, compared with just 13% in 1968. That’s just a snapshot in time, so the number of children who will, at some point, be living without married parents, is much higher.
The marriage rate is down from 72% in 1960 to just 50% in 2016. Of adults who are never married, 42% don’t even want to get married, so it’s not merely delayed marriage.
I don’t see why the Singapore solution is necessary. Societies throughout the ages have been getting married and having kids well before their early to mid 30s, without severe social problems. Education is a significant part of the problem, as way too many people are wasting 4 or 6 extra years of their lives getting business or liberal arts degrees which add relatively few meaningful skills relative to the time commitment, and loading up on debt rather than growing savings from a salary. Might be necessary to make it illegal to discriminate in hiring based on educational status, at least outside of certain professions (doctor, lawyer, etc).
I am not saying Singapore Solution is optimal for society here. But these decisions made by free people and it is very consistent across most, if not all, developed nations. Look at Singapore or South Korea. These nations are the functional nations on earth and have you seen their marriage & birth rates? This follows the good Professors point, if something is happening in the socio-economic world naturally then there must good reasons why it is happening.
And yes we should not celebrate too much. But also most social measurement are improving today versus a lot of history.
Then what is the conservative solutions here? Stating they want young people to get less education without improving the lives of US working class is not going to make labor move that direction. Stating we need get 90% married by 25 and have kids, show me how we get there. We had in that in the early 1960s and by the 1970s we had the divorce revolution.
And looking at the labor market, there is very little to forces private firms to choose college educated workers for many of their positions. (In my office we have seen the college degree inertia for many of our positions over the decades.) A smaller firm could hire non-college educated workers to save cost and charge lower prices.
“Free people” have been deciding all sorts of bad things for all of history. That one decides it doesn’t make it good.
“there must good reasons why it is happening.”
This is literally the “just world” fallacy.
“Then what is the conservative solutions here? Stating they want young people to get less education without improving the lives of US working class is not going to make labor move that direction. Stating we need get 90% married by 25 and have kids, show me how we get there. We had in that in the early 1960s and by the 1970s we had the divorce revolution.”
I agree it’s a difficult problem. It would help to admit its a problem in the first place. If we can’t get to that point, it’s going to be difficult to Marshall any of the tools necessary to address the problem.
The truth is nobody has tried very hard, economically, socially, or culturally, to address this very real problem. There are a few isolated positive signs with Mormons, Israeli’s and others, but the current first world elite doesn’t want learn any lessons from them. In large part it’s a giant collective action failure, and I don’t think any non-coordinated individual decisions are really going to affect to equilibrium.
asdf,
>—–“If we can’t get to that point, it’s going to be difficult to Marshall any of the tools necessary to address the problem.”
Well, here’s hoping we never do get to the point where we “Marshall” the “tools” to implement the Orwellian dystopia of eugenics and “genetics engineering” that you are hoping for so fervently.
Yes, it would be an Orwellian dystopia if we could end genetic disease and give everyone another 15 IQ points. The current utopia of disability and huge underclasses trapped in ghettos and third world hell holes by their genetics is right and just!
asdf,
Genetic engineering cannot “give everyone another 15 IQ points” although quite ironically for you the Flynn Effect has done that naturally.
Eugenics is now, and always has been, primarily about authoritarians like you seeking the power to decide which other people should have the right to have children.
Genetic engineering cannot “give everyone another 15 IQ points”
I’m hoping for that future, not making a statement about the present. “Here’s hoping we get genetic engineering”.
Why you would hope that we can’t raise peoples IQs is a question you should ask yourself. You desire to keep the majority of the worlds population dump, poor, sick, and miserable is noted, it’s the most evil thing anyone can believe in my opinion. Why do you hate people and wish ill on them?
“Eugenics is now, and always has been, primarily about authoritarians like you”
Eugenics is practiced by all people all the time throughout all of history. In the modern world the second a eugenic technology becomes available the VAST majority of people begin using it immediately. Downs Syndrome has nearly been wiped out because the second people are given the ability to eugenically abort Downs Syndrome kids they do. Even a majority of Christians abort when they have a Down syndrome kid, and the overwhelming majority of secular leftists do.
“seeking the power to decide which other people should have the right to have children.”
Apparently, that is what you want to do. I hope that genetic engineering becomes possible and assume, based on past experience and logic, that most people will voluntarily take advantage of it. I don’t need to do anything, the problem will solve itself if the technology arrives.
You apparently want to outlaw it based on your feeling that its morally wrong (whose the authoritarian now).
I also think that current policy tends to subsidize the poor at the expense of the middle class and the childless at the expense of those with children. I would favor the reversal of that policy mix, which I think would result in more middle class people having children based on simple economic logic.
“although quite ironically for you the Flynn Effect has done that naturally.”
False, at least for the kind of IQ that is useful for functioning in modern society like ‘g’. James Flynn has stated this himself before, you should make a minimum effort to know what you are talking about.
>—“Eugenics is practiced by all people all the time throughout all of history. ”
Not the kind of eugenics that you advocate where government policies (including the suppression of free speech and the use of torture that you admire so much in Singapore) are combined with the latest technologies and used to purge the country of what you take to be the inferior races.
You need to consult the history of the first half of the 2oth Century to see what happens when that style of eugenics comes into fashion.
Get back to me when Singapore opens Auschwitz 2.0. You are beyond a crank.
One can only hope you people don’t succeed in your quest to keep most of the world in misery.
The Nazis were far from the only early 20th Century eugenicists. American Progressives had an authoritarian flirtation with the idea.
The rest of the world is, on average, enjoying a far higher standard of living now than ever before in human history.
Your misery is self created.
In terms of today reality:
1) From all data, teenage sex itself has dropped a lot from 2000 and especially 2008 so there must something happening right here.
2) Well, the ‘mating market’ in 1960 created a lot of shotgun weddings if you look at reality.
3) Sure you have the Mormons, whose birth rates have dropped since 2008 as well, and Israel. However, I suspect Israel is relatively new to capitalist economy (since 1990 or so), faces a Cold War with rest of Middle East, and is sitting on a Civil Rights battle for the ages. (I believe Israel and Palenstine are already one nation and at some point Palenstine will switch from stupid IRA tactics/goals to the US Civil Rights tactics/goals.)
“it’s a giant collective action failure” statement is not allowed on the good professor page. My favorite point from the Professor Kling is “If something is happening without government mandates, then there must be a good economic reason for it.”
@Collin,
There are economic reasons to lie, steal, rape, murder, degenerate, languish, and a million other bad things. If there weren’t a “good” reason, people wouldn’t do those things!
The guy who stabbed another dude at the trial my wife was on the jury for had a “good” reason, “he got dissed!” One of the witnesses had a good reason not to show up, another witness had turned up dead.
There is a lot of “just world fallacy” in you.
— “Is low conscientiousness an innate trait or a trait caused by stressful circumstances?”
Why not both?
Conscientiousness is an innate trait in that it is something you have no real control over. However, as with sexual orientation your level of conscientiousness can change over the course of your life. Innate traits like sexual orientation, conscientiousness, openness, etc. are not fixed by by genetics but by the interplay of genetics, experiences, and environment
So your genetics determine what levels of conscientiousness you are capable of and your environment and experiences refine that down to what level you currently possess.
You also want to be really careful saying something that has such a high degree of correlation with poverty is innate and imutable because that both sends the message to those poor people that there is no point in their even trying to be more conscientious because it is impossible for them to change. While at the same time encouraging society to pass laws enshrining them as a permanent underclass, either by providing everything for them via welfare or oppressing them by imposing conscientious behavior on them under force of law.
Kathryn Edin wrote an ethnography of single mothers around Camden, NJ called Promises I Can Keep. She found that poor women often used motherhood as a route to conscientiousness – when a teenager is used to “ripping and running”, motherhood is a reality sandwich that often makes her get her priorities straight.
The fathers usually experienced a brief episode of responsibility, but it generally wore off in a few months. A dreamy boyfriend often becomes a no-good father without actually changing his behavior very much.
Perhaps this is a selection phenomenon:
I know Immigrant families in California is definitely true over the decades it is definitely true.
Impulsiveness means being heedless or ignorant of consequences. High inverse correlation with IQ.
It seems to me that almost everyone explores their impulsiveness at some point in their youth. Do a quick inventory of yourself and all your well established friends when they were in college. A sizeable number of us/them had some episodes. There was lots of alcohol among those who eventually became successful, and we all know that has a greater impact on impulsiveness than any other sociological factor, by far.
Somehow, some of them find a way to make something of themselves. It seemed to always work out OK for George W. Bush or Brett Cavanaugh. Perhaps the ability to contain and manage the effects of impulsiveness has more to do with success than the ability to abstain does.
I’ve gotten drunk plenty in my life, but I’ve never done the following:
1) Missed a shift at work because I was hung over.
2) Showed up to work high.
3) Drove a car drunk.
4) Had dangerous sex.
5) Engaged in other high risk behavior while inebriated.
6) Etc
Most people of my class don’t seem to do those things either, even if they get pretty drunk sometimes.
I did observe those behaviors amongst the poor when I worked lower end jobs in high school, etc.
Even when hammered, those with conscientiousness seem to have some idea of “this I the limit, I shouldn’t go past this.”
There is another kind of discipline called “don’t get yourself in that situation” discipline. “I will likely behave badly if I go to that bar, so I don’t go to that bar.” I think the conscientiousness do more of this.
This second type of discipline is incredibly important, and especially important for those that have less of the first. It’s also much better shaped by cultural markers (society tells you not to go to the bar).
This is another thing Bryan Caplan doesn’t get. He says “well what if they just use protection.” This is wrong for two reasons.
1) Protection sucks. It interrupts the process. Doesn’t feel as good. It fails all the time (and not just physical failure, people don’t use it in the moment because they don’t want to). This doesn’t even get into STDs.
Telling people to have a free for all if they use protection is telling them to go to that bar that when they go they tend to do something bad.
2) There seems to be this bizarre believe that sex that doesn’t result in pregnancy has no effect on the person having it. As if notch count and abortion didn’t have huge effects on peoples psychology.
I can forgive a horny 18 year old for believing this, but if you’ve been out there in the dating world for some time it’s obvious. If you don’t want to believe my anecdotes believe all the social science on this. Sleeping around, even when it doesn’t result in pregnancy, damages peoples ability to have successful marriages.
I disagree with your take on causation and sex, but the point on self-discipline is well taken, and has a lot to do with multiculturalism. Not only religious groups such as Muslims but many national groups, and even some subcultures that started here in America are based on the notion that if you behave unwisely or even criminally (rape if you’re Muslim, theft if you’re from some parts of Africa, etc) it’s not your fault and you shouldn’t be made to suffer for it. Preserving western civilization absolutely demands that we reject that notion and any person who promotes it.
Agreed. The documentary “Journey’s With George”, made by Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, certainly demonstrated that the strength in George W. Bush’s character was influenced by his experience overcoming impulsiveness. If nothing else it certainly helped him connect with Alexandra Pelosi. Redemption is a universal character arc in both fiction and real life.
Everyone’s more impulsive in youth, that doesn’t mean poor youths are as impulsive as bourgeois ones. In my middle class suburb it meant drinking beer or maybe smoking a joint. Hard drugs were nearly nonexistent, as was violent crime. Meanwhile, the poor inner city neighborhood where I went to high school was the heroin epicenter of the region and violent crime was out of control, both largely attributable to the younger demographics. Not all impulsiveness is equal.
TBH that simply has more to do with availability and local norms, i.e. crack v. coke or meth v. Adderall, weed v. benzos. Lack of violent property crime simply had to do with parental wealth and violent interpersonal crime simply one of degrees and reporting.
To your point my upper middle class high school had rampant prescription drugs, LSD, mushrooms, and alcohol use with the occasional coke and heroin user with rape, as defined today, being commonplace, as was physical assault up to tenth grade.
One thing that is important here on the latter, and not talked about, is stability. Suburban high schools are often far part and made up of kids that have known each other since kindergarten. Hence the pecking orders have already been resolved by tenth grade hence no need for continual violence outside of newcomers whereas inner city schools often have high turnover and mobility of students hence violence is continually need to reassert that order.
It seemed to always work out OK for Bush and Kavanaugh.
One of the big differences in US class is the the difference of upper versus lower class is the upper class have more leeway to get with such behavior. And there are failures of the upper class as Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, do happen. And Bush really got lucky his DUI happened before the 1980s and he did stop abusing alcohol around 30.
I agree with the general picture, except that the expansion of the welfare state (and other engineered incentives, such as the child-support collection system, which has the effect of giving loose women all the choice and none of the responsibility) dwarfs all other causal factors. Thomas Sowell has documented this extensively.
Seems like a contrived justification for hating average US citizens. Income varies widely between states. Are we to believe that Californians are more conscientious than Mississippians?
The reality is that substitution of common sense for leftist elitism produces egalitarian opportunity across the income spectrum.
As Stephen Moore writes in the WSJ:
“ The latest data from the Census Bureau monthly surveys tell a different story. Real median household income—the amount earned by those in the very middle—hit $65,084 (in 2019 dollars) for the 12 months ending in July. That’s the highest level ever and a gain of $4,144, or 6.8%, since Mr. Trump took office. By comparison, during 7½ years under President Obama—starting from the end of the recession in June 2009 through January 2017—the median household income rose by only about $1,000.”
Mickey Kaus provides a persuasive exegesis:
“… …a variety of indicators show that wages are not only finally rising at the bottom, but they’re rising faster for those workers than for the richest Americans. Trump’s presidency seems to be delivering on what was its most important promise: : to bring back the incomes of people too often dismissed as the economy’s “losers.”
You can give some credit to the increases in the minimum wage. But they only affect 22 states (and DC) containing (by my calculation) a bit less than half of the population. It’s hard not to also credit to Trump’s relative success at controlling illegal immigration numbers–at least keeping them below what they would otherwise have risen to in a booming economy.”
Libertarians prioritize the welfare of China and illegal aliens above the welfare of US citizens so they are always having to invent convoluted theories to hide behind.
Not quite prioritize above — but treat them equal. A Chinese person with the job, or an illegal alien with the job are no better, but also no worse, than a US person with that same job. (Many Libs would agree that 10 Chinese people with jobs is better than 3 US people getting the same work done, but that’s a slightly different # jobs / productivity issue.)
Sort of Ghandi’s wife’s complaint — Ghandi treated his wife no better than any other woman.
US voters, like all normal people, want to be treated “better than average”.
Adopt the cultural norms then purposefully intermix. Always a good strategy.
There is a core gene the impulsive want to acquire by marital selection. I call it the ice gene, the gene that let’s you find stuff when everything is covered in snow.
Both Caplan and Murray see the cultural changes of the last several decades as removing some of the social guardrails.
This sounds very much like Myron Magnet’s 1993 The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass. “When the rich sneeze, the poor get sick.”
Impulsiveness does cause poverty.
So does undernourishment. And bad hygiene. And bad housing.
Society could be better, some.
Poor people could act better – in theory, quite a lot better. And a few poor folk do.
In practice, it seems like few “are able to” control their impulsiveness.
Tho it’s hard to separate impulsiveness from “stupid”, where people choose, freely, to make stupid decisions.
The reductions in sex are more likely related to the excess estrogens in the environment from female birth control pills — it’s fairly well documented that many species’ sperm counts have been decreasing in the last decades.
I now believe that the USA, and every OECD country, should be having a voluntary national service, where everybody is offered a job. Different countries, and states, and maybe even cities, can run such job programs differently, but everybody should be offered a job that they can physically do.
The big disagreement has long been about “deserving” and “undeserving” poor in getting “help”. This unresolvable argument is one stream leading towards the terrible Universal Basic Income.
Gov’t has tried some of this in the past, not as successfully as hoped. It will continue to do a lousy job at giving people jobs. The gov’t should still do this, and have it as a policy, and different politicians can promise changes to make it work better.
A job should be every citizen’s civilized benefit (not right) — paid for by taxes. But for work done, not for nothing.
We should also be talking more about civilized benefits, not “rights” — for those good things that poor people should have that they can’t afford themselves.
The Quartz article (by Karen Weese) is pretty good about Nudges, and the opt-in vs opt-out way to get more folks to do the more socially optimal things, like organ donation and matching 401(K) donations when the employer matches.
But the Big Gov’t worship is still there:
all the tweaks in the world cannot match the impact of a major policy initiative, such as mandated sick or vacation time, or an increase in the minimum wage.
There have been increases in the minimum wage. There has never been an end to poverty after such an increase. And there HAS been some increases in unemployment with higher minimum wages mandated by gov’t.
A better program would be for the gov’t to pay the SS contribution of low income folk, so they get SS credit, but also more money; similarly with unemployment and other required taxes paid by the low-income workers.
Finally, we need to directly, and indirectly, support more jobs. Probably also more part time jobs.
Tom G, your idea was the centerpiece of Mickey Kaus’s 1992 The End of Equality. An interesting book. Fascinating to see how much has changed in the last 30 years, and how much hasn’t!
There are small scale UBI tries — where are the small city tries for a Job Guarantee?
There are none, and for a reason Kaus mentions. Government unions are very, very strongly against it.
I am reminded of this article in the New York Times about the village of Kiryas Joel from 2011
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/nyregion/kiryas-joel-a-village-with-the-numbers-not-the-image-of-the-poorest-place.html
It is located about 50 outside NYC and is by a WIDE margin the poorest community in America. According to the article 70% of the population lives below the poverty line and per capita income is only $4494 per year. No other community in America is even close.
Their poverty has not driven them to despair or crime. There is no homelessness. No one goes hungry. No one is shabbily dressed. Crime, drug abuse, and out of wedlock birth are literally unheard of.
The village is populated almost entirely by Orthodox Jews. They are poor not because they are impulsive or uneducated. They are poor because they make a choice to devote their lives to studying obscure religious texts written in a variety of ancient languages rather than putting that same internally driven academic rigor to studying the vagaries of, say, corporate tax law.
From Instapundit:
THAT’S BECAUSE THE BEHAVIOR TRAITS THAT CORRELATE WITH POVERTY — LIKE POOR IMPULSE CONTROL — ALSO CORRELATE WITH POOR HEALTH, INDEPENDENT OF HEALTH CARE: Poor People Are Still Sicker Than The Rich In Germany, Despite Universal Health Care.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/16/770442938/poor-people-are-still-sicker-than-the-rich-in-germany-despite-universal-health-c