Start Date: January 17, 2023
“Because !!” Do you remember those passionate arguments with your parents, over anything from curfews to having to wear a coat over your Halloween costume? You exhausted them by endlessly asking “But why ???” At some point they gave up and resorted to, “Because I said so” or simply “Because”. That meant the discussion was over even if you didn’t see the logical cause-and-effect reasoning behind their conclusion.
The great economist Thomas Sowell once wrote:
“One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.” [1].
This means that while things may be observed in concert, it is not always the case that result B was caused by observation A. There may be other factors. Suppose a town noted that many of the residents with heart disease also had names that began with “P”. Would that make you hesitate to name your child “Paul” or “Patty”? It might be worth looking more deeply. Were all of the P-named heart patients chain smoking, hard drinking, overweight individuals with high-stress jobs and no regular exercise or relaxation?
In physical science there is a method which involves making a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test the hypothesis, examining the results, and then deriving conclusions. This process may be repeated many times to improve the understanding. Ideally it is desirable to remove as many variables as possible.
In physics and chemistry, known as the hard sciences, it is somewhat straightforward to set up experiments. Galileo allegedly dropped balls of different mass from the Tower of Pisa. They all landed in the same amount of time proving that acceleration due to gravity is a constant. In chemistry you can mix various amounts of different substances and compare the results. Experiments can be set up again and again, varying one parameter while holding others constant
But statistical analysis is much hazier in medicine where there really aren’t fixed parameters because no two patients are the same. In societal studies it can be even worse, as the parameters themselves may be qualitative. Consider two subjects given great heated discussion in recent years.
COVID
What has been held up as THE SCIENCE was substantially less than that. In addition to the challenges of all medical studies, the pandemic was deemed such an urgent concern that the companies known as “Big Pharma” did not go through the nearly 2 decades of studies that would normally be required for a new drug. Secondly the entire population was “the experiment”. There was no real control group for comparison. There also wasn’t a wide variety of accepted medications to be compared: which one, what dose, frequency, duration? Some of this can be forgiven as emergencies require you try something and analyze it later. The problem is that we haven’t seem to have done much of the latter.
One very quick check is to try and assess risk factors. The assumption was that age is the major risk factor. That makes sense in that age reduces your body’s ability to generate new healthy tissue. Also in some countries the elderly often cohabit in nursing homes allowing easy spread of disease among vulnerable patients. A chart of the top 20 nations affected by COVID, actually top 19 as data from China is highly suspect, indicates that Japan had the lowest mortality rate, coming in at 51 per 100,000 population [2]. Yet, as demographers know, Japan is the oldest nation in the world, with a median age of 49 years [3]. At first blush that seems curious that the oldest nation had the least fatalities.
To the extent the data can be believed, the United States came in with 335 deaths per 100,000 population [2]. It is now known that the American tally of COVID deaths was overcounted because hospitals were paid more for COVID patients. Thus any decedent with a positive COVID test was counted even when there were other factors, as extreme as gunshot wounds [4]. But let us assume that the United States, whose median age is 39 [3], a full decade younger than in Japan, still had a much higher mortality rate. What else could be in play?
A CDC mortality document from 2021 noted that 79% of U.S. COVID patients in hospitals were overweight or obese [5]. Obesity is a comorbidity for COVID. It would be grand if we could compare American weight issues in COVID patients with the population at large. Tragically roughly 72% of all Americans are overweight [6] and 41% are obese [7] making it more difficult to see if there could be a dependence. But Japan to the rescue. The nation with the oldest population and yet the lowest COVID mortality rate has an obesity rate of just 3.6% [8] compared to the American rate of 41%. This is not definitive but is a logical hypothesis for the different outcomes in the two countries.
Perhaps we should look at the cause-effect relationship in reverse. It may be that Japan did not experience high mortality because they are old, but, the Japanese live to be the oldest BECAUSE they have such a low rate of obesity, a comorbidity for COVID, and heart disease, and stroke, and diabetes, and some cancers….. While no one is immortal, perhaps their age is not their risk, it is their reward, the end result of a healthy lifestyle.
PRISON
Having illustrated an example of the challenges of defining causal relations in medical science now consider taking on a greater challenge and look at a social issue. You have heard people claim that there is systemic racism in the criminal justice system. The main metric used to forward this argument is that some, but not all, ethnic minorities are in prison in larger percentages than their representation in the population at large.
Suppose we look at gender (biological). As of January 2023 the government indicates that there are 147,989 male prisoners and 10,959 female federal prisoners [9]. So while men and women exist in roughly equal numbers in society, there are 13.5 times as many men as women in prison. So I ask, are you willing to believe that the justice system is a vast matriarchy of man-hating amazon women who control whom is arrested and imprisoned? Or is it possible that men commit more crimes, particularly more violent crime? If so then it may be possible that some ethnic groups have higher crime rates.
BEFORE you scream “racist” consider that, yes, some may have unfair, uneven, circumstances, that are other than, and earlier than, arrest and prosecution. Beyond identity what else is known about the prison population?
First it has been reported that 85% of youth in prisons come from fatherless homes [10]. Over 70% of America’s inmates cannot read above a 4th grade level [11]. Without the ability to read it is largely impossible to learn. One can imagine they are also lacking in math, science, and meaningful knowledge of world history. This puts these individuals at a significant disadvantage for legal employment or business development.
When interviewing Winsome Sears during her campaign for Virginia lieutenant governor, commentator Armstrong Williams was stunned to hear her say that 85% of Virginia’s black students in 8th grade are illiterate. He was so shocked he had his staff fact check the claim. What they learned from the NAEP was that these results were typical. The numbers for MD, NY, etc. all indicated 80%-90% lack of proficiency in reading and math. In California 90% could not do math or read well [12].
Lack of meaningful education means there is no hope of a high-priced, filled with perks, job in Silicon Valley, or a catering business, or even a job that requires filling out an application form. There are little prospects for the future. From here the argument can be made that the disproportionate representation of minorities in prison is caused by opportunities being negated by systems that failed them in childhood.
When considering the causes for the educational discrepancy two factors come to mind. Household income and single parent families, whether father or mother. In 2021 the median household incomes by race were: Asians $101,418, Whites, $77,999, Hispanics $57,981, and Blacks $48,297 [13]. As to the percentage of those raised in single family homes from 2011-2021 the data indicate 16% for Asians, 25% for whites, 42% for Hispanics, and 66% for African Americans [14]. So Black and Hispanic families have the least income and often have one parent.
In and of themselves these situations would not completely eliminate advancement if it is still possible to obtain a quality education. But poverty and having only one parent largely preclude options for private schools, home schooling, or moving to a wealthy neighborhood where parents demand high performing public schools. These children are left with the bureaucracy of the failing public education system.
The situation in Baltimore City was highlighted when the story of one child was reported in the news. As a senior he was told that instead of graduating he would have to return to 9th grade. The reason was that he had only passed 3 classes in 4 years and had a 0.13 GPA. He was late or absent for 272 days. That explains not graduating. It does not explain his being a senior, i.e. being passed on instead of being held back. Having failed Algebra I and Spanish I, he was then enrolled in Algebra II and Spanish II. His single mother who has 3 children and works 3 jobs was unaware of his situation. Even worse, his status was not an aberration. He ranked 62nd out of 120 students. Much of the school was doing little better [15].
Lest this be deemed an argument for throwing more money on a fire pit it must be noted that this district ran on a $1.4 BILLION dollar budget for 78,000 students, allowing for $18,000 per pupil [16]. A quick Google search indicates that the average cost of private school in Maryland is $14,000 [17]. So for roughly 30% higher cost the public schools were doing little more than churn students through the the bureaucracy with no actual educational accomplishments.
The CEO of the Baltimore City school system made $339,028 plus benefits which added to a total compensation of $444,875 [16]. For reference the Governor of Maryland has a salary of $180,000. Congressional representatives and Senators make $174,000.
Multiply this by a generation and we have millions of undereducated poor minority children from a failing system with no future. That they give in to crime seems almost inevitable. Tragically the end result for too many will be prison or an early grave.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
This simple exercise is very cursory. Yet if observations held it could point out some major policy concerns..
Perhaps, we should provide medical guidance based on body-mass-index as well as age.
Hopefully, we can provide poor minorities the educational choices of the better off.
Certainly, we must pray that communities can encourage men to parent their children.
Why? “Because”.
REFERENCES
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3237859-one-of-the-first-things-taught-in-introductory-statistics-textbooks,
Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
[2] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
[3] https://www.worlddata.info/average-age.php
[4] Nelson, Maxford, “WASHINGTON HEALTH OFFICIALS: GUNSHOT VICTIMS COUNTED AS COVID-19 DEATHS”, May 21, 2020, https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-health-officials-gunshot-victims-counted-as-covid-19-deaths/
[5] Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), CDC, “Body Mass Index and Risk for COVID-19–Related Hospitalization, Intensive Care Unit Admission, Invasive Mechanical Ventilation, and Death — United States, March–December 2020, Weekly / March 12, 2021 / 70(10);355–361”, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7010e4-H.pdf
[6] https://www.singlecare.com/blog/news/obesity-statistics/
[7] https://www.tfah.org/report-details/state-of-obesity-2022/
[8] https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/14321/?ln=en
[9] op.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp
[10] https://americafirstpolicy.com/latest/20220825-fatherlessness-and-crime
[12] Williams, Armstrong, “Many of America’s Black youths cannot read or do math — and that imperils us all”, 1/04/21, https://thehill.com/opinion/education/579750-many-of-americas-black-youths-cannot-read-or-do-math-and-that-imperils-us/
[13] “INCOME AND WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES: AN OVERVIEW OF RECENT DATA”, https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/11/income-and-wealth-in-the-united-states-an-overview-of-recent-data
[15] https://www.foxnews.com/us/baltimore-student-fails-classes-top-half
[16] Andrzejewski, Adam, “Baltimore City Public Schools Promoted Student With 0.13 GPA While Spending A $1.4 Billion”, FORBES, March 30, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/03/30/baltimore-city-public-schools-promoted-student-with-013-gpa-while-spending-a-14-billion-budget/?sh=720b079363dc
[17] https://www.privateschoolreview.com/tuition-stats/maryland