The last time was a while back when I said be grateful diversity reduces trust. Now,via Ilkka, I came across Jason Malloy coming out the better (in my uninformed opinion) in intellectual debate with anthropologist Peter Frost (as well as some other random yahoos on the internet). In contrast to the “Bare Branches” theory, Jason claimed that “sexually deprived men are well-behaved, socially beneficial men.” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that, since I had repeated Tim Harford’s bit about the effects of supply and demand in places with high rates of male incarceration for blacks. Rather than subsidizing surrogate mothers to have daughters, as one commenter suggested, we should stack the deck in favor of male births, creating a “reserve army of the [reproductively] unemployed” that will keep the rest in line. As a bonus, this helps explain why Mexican immigrants have surprisingly low crime rates, which shoot up in the next generation. As Jason says later in the (long) thread “the sex ratio of different immigrant groups has predicted their social pathology. Groups with many males and few females resulted in more family formation and harder working males.”
One thing I don’t get from Jason’s explanation: why is the sex-ratio biased for males at birth? This conflicts with what I said about gender ratios just recently. If males are more likely to die, that just makes having a male more risky. The total fitness of males and females must be equal, the fitness of those early dying males is zero (dragging down the average male fitness), so why is it advantageous for a woman to give birth to a male? Perhaps many deaths occur before too many resources have been invested?
Finally, Jason Malloy should have his own blog and post regularly. He is one of the highest quality commenters on the net. I don’t know how an artist wound up so informed on the scientific literature, but hats off to him.
September 3, 2009 at 2:01 am
Very interesting data. Thank you for bringing to our attention.
My take:
Hmm, I would bet that all this data comes from a time where earning a decent living resulted in a wife and kids. Men seeing that producing more money is the key for reproduction results in men working even harder to earn more money and the reduction in violence (working your ass off gives you little time to fight). As well as mostly monogamy and hookers for the men not quite making it. But eventually every man hoped to make enough for a family.
Now that our societies are structured to reward criminals and badboys with reproduction and a system that amounts to many women having sex with the same small group of men, the rest of the males will eventually respond with increased levels of violence.
These changes have already in fact happened, the results of such changes are being shielded in America by keeping 2.2 million men in jail and by 30 million abortions (Crime rate would be much higher without them).
China still rewards men on the basis on earning power. They still have a strong core of monogamy unlike the west. Men will do fine there. Here, not so much. Even high IQ Asians are taking up the thug life in America. The chicks like the badboys.
September 3, 2009 at 2:39 am
My guess is that in an ancestral environment a woman with modern calorie intake could shunt those calories into a boy and produce a modern sized man who would have a large reproductive advantage over his smaller peers.
September 3, 2009 at 8:06 am
As a bonus, this helps explain why Mexican immigrants have surprisingly low crime rates, which shoot up in the next generation.
It’s far from certain that Mexican immigrant men expect to remain single and celibate forever. Many of them will return to Mexico to get married after working in the United States for a while, often bringing their new wives to America. This pattern was very common among European immigrants, especially those from southern Europe, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Peter
September 3, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I thought it was a truism that societies with relatively more single men were more violent, all else equal.
I’ve heard it a myth, via the scholar Terry Anderson that the old west was as violent as pop culture would have it. To the degree that it was violent, was this due to the presence of single men not expecting to form families at some point? I’m assuming here that the more violent periods and locales in the old west had relatively more single, nomadic men in abundance, which sort of begs the question I know.
September 3, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Actually after linking to Jason’s comment I see he mentions the “frontier” mentality – the old west – as a separate phenomenon, arising from the predisposition to violence of these non-New Englanders.
September 3, 2009 at 11:55 am
> why is the sex-ratio biased for males at birth
My first guess would be matters of inclusive fitness related to violence, threats of violence, coercion, and dominance.
If the ratio at birth is 52 men per hundred (or whatever), the women are fitter than the men in terms of number of descendants, but the inclusive fitness of the men is probably equal to that of the women because any person is a little better off with more male relatives.
Or so I imagined. If I’m right, birth ratios should be more equal in the longest-peaceful societies. But I’m probably wrong, because more males are said to be found further from the equator: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21sex.html
State life is less violent, and we all know north europeans lived under warlords until very recently, north asians have a long history of large states compared to sub-saharans, etc.
September 3, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Grim:
Now that our societies are structured to reward criminals and badboys with reproduction and a system that amounts to many women having sex with the same small group of men, the rest of the males will eventually respond with increased levels of violence.
No, I don’t think what Jason wrote. The data is not that old, and Dads still have more kids than Cads:
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2009/09/sexual-behavior-and-number-of-kids.html
The highest levels of violence are found in the black communities with the highest ratios of females to males. There is no support for the bare branches theory.
Even high IQ Asians are taking up the thug life in America.
Very few. The crime rate for asians is quite low. I think most asian criminals tend to be more recent southeast asian ones, like vietnamese, cambodian or laotian. Over time they get less criminal, becoming more like their northeast asian peers (GNXP had a post on this a while back, I forget where though). The same pattern does not occur in hispanics, as “Generations of Exclusion” shows.
Michael Vassar:
You are correct. There is evidence that in “good times” women give birth to more males. This is because males have higher reproductive variance. When you think your odds are good, you roll the dice.
Peter:
You are right that these immigrants don’t expect to remain single. But for now they are focused on working and making money. The next generation will have about equal number of males and females. In an environment more like it would have been back in Mexico, their crime rate rises closer to Mexican levels.
Dain:
The truism is the “bare branches theory”, and Jason has cited evidence that its a myth. Ryan McMaken had also written about how peaceful the western frontier was. I sent him a link to some contrary claims:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/007151.asp
It probably wasn’t nearly as violent as portrayed in the movies, but the past was considerably more violent than the present. I had previously thought the crime rate was low in the early 20th century before jumping up in the 20s, but the data I based that on may have undercounted in those early years:
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/corpses-as-artifacts-of-a-cowboy-culture/
September 3, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Too sleepy to add anything of substance, but I wanted to endorse your endorsement of Jason Malloy. You don’t fuck with some guys and he’s one of ’em.
September 4, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Keep in mind that the relative fitness of male vs. female offspring is at least partially dependent on their proportions already in the population at large.
If nine out of ten births are males, most males will not get a chance to reproduce, whereas virtually all females will. If nine out of ten are female, females will a high-probability but low-return investment while every male will probably reproduce, possibly with many partners.
Genes that predispose towards one sex or the other will eventually reach an equilibrium in a population – with its nature depending on how effective an investment each gender is. Male births are slightly more likely probably because male conceptions are more likely to terminate and male children more likely to die, so the conception rate that *results* in a fifty-fifty distribution has more males.
September 4, 2009 at 3:18 pm
This is hard to think through, for me anyway.
I was reading the Frost paper Jason Malloy cited at GNXP. “Among 19th century Labrador Inuit, only 57 males remained for
every 100 females in the 15+ age bracket because of hunting deaths from drowning or
exposure (Scheffel, 1984).”
I think we have to consider fitness outlays and revenues for the parents who are “deciding” what proportion of male children to have. There are large outlays from conception to age 18 or whatever, and smaller ones beyond (one continues to support offspring in social conflicts even if they become economically independent).
Gestation and birth, while not necessarily that fun, are actually a rather modest fraction of this outlay. So I think if male newborns have higher mortality, the ratio at birth will be male-biased enough to almost completely compensate and restore a near 50-50 split.
In contrast, consider a model where investment in the offspring occurs evenly through age 18, then stops instantly. There is no social of economic gender dimorphism. Both sexes also instantly become fertile and marry at 18. Also, 90% of males die at 18 the day before marrying. In this case, I don’t think the adult sex ratio will evolve to be even, or anywhere close. Regardless of what mating system results, the young males that survive have a 10x greater representation in the 3rd generation than the females, on average – but only a ten percent chance of surviving in the first place. 10-fold * 10% = 1. So their fitness is the same as the females’ even at that insane adult gender ratio. And, importantly, the cost to the parents is the same whether they raise a male or a female – in contrast to the case where there is elevated infant mortality in males: when an infant dies, you evade the outlays of raising it (or opportunity costs of raising it – different ways of thinking the same thought).
The situation in the Labrador Inuits seems more like the model with deaths at age 18, because most of those Inuit men are not children when the excess male deaths occur (of course lots of inuit children must die too, but those deaths must be far more gender-balanced).
So – excess deaths of one gender in young children should affect the gender ratio at birth more… the younger the average excess death is, the more the ratio at birth is affected. What predictions do we get? Obviously, the biggest cause of death in young children, by far, is infection. Males do have weaker immunity and higher rates of some infections. Since more males are born in the north, is there more early-childhood death from infection there… and/or are the males children there more “ahead” of their sisters in such deaths than southern males are?
And, actually, I think the social benefits of having more male relatives may still exist and bias births towards males. However, if this effect exists it’s obviously overbalanced by something else, since on its own it makes the wrong predictions.
The Trivers-Willard thing (male bias in well-fed, thriving parents) could certainly be going on too.
September 4, 2009 at 3:30 pm
In other words, if we assume
1. the cost of gestating and birthing a child is zero (approximately true, compared to the cost of raising one)
2. all deaths from infection occur just after birth
3. all other causes of death are gender-balanced
then we should get a 50-50 adult sex ratio (unless there is some other force that distorts it, like greater social benefits of having male kin). For any population, then, the male:female ratio for infant deaths from infection, times the proportion of all deaths that are infection-caused, equals (male:female ratio at birth)^(-1).
I think.
But it would be damn hard to make the calculation without the above-mentioned distortive idealizations.
September 4, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Heh, I just noticed TGGP said pretty much the same thing in the post. I should have just said “I agree.”
September 5, 2009 at 1:45 pm
The total fitness of males and females must be equal
That’s not right. From a kin selection point of view, someone’s value t you is that person’s degree of relatedness to you times the expected number of offspring that individual will have which will reach adulthood.
Incidentally, I’ve seen people erroneously arguing that a species ought to produce the same number of males as females, and I used to wonder whether that meant at conception, birth, or adulthood. It’s none of these, the correct claim is that on average the parents ought to devote the same amount of resources to producing males as females. There no reason the numbers should ever be close to equal.
September 6, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I was about to compliment your comment Eric, and say I agreed, but you pre-empted me!
George Weinberg, I don’t see how your point complicates matters. All children in the next generation make up the fitness of the previous generation. Every child gets half its genes from its mother and half its genes from its father. The number of mothers (which the total fitness of women is divided up among) might be different from the number of fathers, but the total fitness must be equal. Can you come up with an example where the total fitness is not equal?
I agree that resource outlays complicate matters and could make it better to produce more males if not many resources are spent on the ones that die. I disagree that equal resources should be invested: economics suggests that the marginal fitness per unit of resource is what should be equalized. If King Herod kills all the males born in one year, the fitness of males born the next year (and the year before) should rise and it would subsequently be rational to devote more resources to creating males.
I disagree that it is costless to conceive and birth a child. Historically speaking, there are a great many deaths in childbirth. It is a large investment. That is actually the theory behind why rape is regarded as so bad: a woman has been forced to take on such an investment (or risk of one) that she did not choose for herself. If it were costless it would not be regarded as a big deal.
Why are more males born in the north? I believe tropical areas have more disease, which might kill more of them off in the womb.
September 8, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I’m not sure what you’re asking. The total fitness of all males equals the total fitness of all females, yes. If it turn out that twice as many females as males reach adulthood, then it must be that on average an adult male will have twice as many children on average as an adult female. If the same number of males as females are born, then the expected number of offspring at birth must be the same for males and females, independent of how many of each reach adulthood.
September 8, 2009 at 11:09 pm
So we agree? Now I’m not sure what you were saying!
September 8, 2009 at 9:34 pm
[…] Leave a Comment Novaseeker has responded to Jason Malloy’s claims which I highlighted recently. I responded in the comments there with some references to the GSS & Whiskey’s […]
September 14, 2009 at 8:30 am
TGGP, I don’t know what you’re like dealing with jarring opinions, but if you’re not averse to dueling with “anti-semites” then you won’t mind my saying this is precisely the sort of line one would expect a “rootless cosmopolitan” Jew to push. The increased economic stimulus (such as it is) provided by diversity obviously results from having to compensate for the degraded social environment one finds himself in. Well, that’s just swell for for the handful of creatives who stand to benefit (eg Jason Molloy), but what about the mass of people thoroughly confused and demoralized by it all? What kind of an idiot would prefer to see his streets become unwalkable because of all the you-know-whats just because that might (might) pad his bank account some? Idiocy on stilts, really.
September 14, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I suppose I’m less averse to dealing with anti-semites than most people are, which is not to say I don’t have a preference in the sort of people I duel with. The line of thinking may be the sort a Jew might push, but as Yuri Slezkine says, we’re all becoming more jew-ish (or should the word by “jewy”?).
People are confused and demoralized by the normal “creative destruction” which characterizes healthy economies, even without the diversity bit. People can’t understand how these sort of things work, they have some systematically wrong beliefs. I think crime is a legitimate concern rather than just a code-word for racism, but like terrorism (though not to that extent) its still overblown. Law-abiding whites have quite a long list of things they’re at more risk from. Furthermore, crime isn’t quite related to “diversity”, which is why Canadian-style genuine multiculturalism works so well.
What kind of idiot would prefer it? I take revealed preference as the best standard, and plenty of people still want to move to such places.
September 16, 2009 at 6:28 am
People are confused and demoralized by the normal “creative destruction” which characterizes healthy economies, even without the diversity bit. People can’t understand how these sort of things work, they have some systematically wrong beliefs.
Economic arguments seem to resonate most strongly with people desperate to find some way of perceiving the new reality so it’s understandable you’d attempt to link anomie to people’s failure to appreciate the benefits of ‘creative destruction.’
Problematic for you is that any change can be analyzed (and is best analyzed) in terms of its costs and benefits. I don’t disagree with you that certain benefits can be attributed to diversity (or even anomie itself). But I find those benefits are paltry compared to the costs.
With respect to the benefits of diversity, I take a different tack. I would argue that diversity, by forcing us to consider what we share in common, has helped foster a greater concern for individuals among people who would have otherwise been indifferent. This, in turn, has helped de-fang nationalist sentiment and diminish the likelihood of war between former belligerents so much so that such conflicts (eg France v Germany) are virtually unthinkable. This is no small benefit but it too must be weighed against the cost it exacts. In this case, the cost of maintaining the racially diverse status quo is the eventual effective racial extinction of (at least) whites.
(It’s irresponsible to state the foregoing without offering an opinion regarding a preferred solution. For me, an ‘internal racial rearrangement’ (be it on a local or national level) preserves the moral lessons mass diversity has taught us as well as safeguarding racial integrity and eliminating the frustrations caused by ‘intimate diversity.’)
I take revealed preference as the best standard, and plenty of people still want to move to such places.
Those moves only reveal what those people are prepared to settle for, not necessarily what they prefer, and thus don’t constitute evidence of preference. Fleeing diversity, on the other hand, does constitute evidence of preference.
September 16, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Economic arguments seem to resonate most strongly with people desperate to find some way of perceiving the new reality so it’s understandable you’d attempt to link anomie to people’s failure to appreciate the benefits of ‘creative destruction.’
Nice bulverism there, except you have no evidence I fit your “desperate” archetype. I actually used to believe in the “bare branches” theory until I read Jason’s debunking.
Problematic for you is that any change can be analyzed (and is best analyzed) in terms of its costs and benefits
Its not problematic, the “seen” costs to the individual are obvious, the “unseen” benefits on the macro scale are not but they outweigh the costs.
This is no small benefit
No shit. Not that I’d necessarily attribute that benefit to diversity.
In this case, the cost of maintaining the racially diverse status quo is the eventual effective racial extinction of (at least) whites.
I don’t see it. The Japanese are dwindling away and they have pretty much no diversity. Modernity is reducing white birth rates and that’s it. There’s no smallpox epidemic or genocidal war threatening the existence of whites.
For me, an ‘internal racial rearrangement’ (be it on a local or national level) preserves the moral lessons mass diversity has taught us as well as safeguarding racial integrity and eliminating the frustrations caused by ‘intimate diversity.’
I favor breaking up the U.S into a dizzying multitude of arrangements of whatever sort people want. Those will include some racial seperatists of various sorts but also many diverse areas (pretty much all the major cities, though even they could be divided by neighborhood). Michael H. Hart seems to get that in his proposal for racial seperation, though even that comprises far too few countries for my taste.
Regarding preference, Sister Y noted before that the Great Plains are depopulating and are pretty much all white. People also continue to move here from whitest Europe rather than the other way round. The country is continuing to urbanize, and as Ed Glaeser argues modern urbanism breeds norms compatible with diversity. You might argue that this is because of the economic rewards of cities. But my point was that diversity breaks down social ties which inhibit economic growth.