On 15 December Chris Green cited evidence he thinks is supportive of >the conclusions of the book I was "pushing" a few weeks >ago: _The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone_.
As I wrote in a post under the thread on “objectivity” recently, while one can never completely remove one’s own biases and preconceptions in assessing a thesis, one of the basic principles is that one should seek out writings critical of the thesis before drawing any firm conclusions. (John Stuart Mill puts the same notion rather more strongly in his essay “On Liberty”: “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”) This is the third time in recently weeks that Chris has “pushed” *The Spirit Level*. So I ask of Chris, which of the several informed critiques of the “Spirit Level” that have been published, some of which are easily found on the internet, have you read? There are plenty of informed critical responses out there, not by any means all from the political Right. For instance, Andrew Leigh (former professor of economics at the Australian National University and currently a Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives who regards himself as “about as anti-inequality an economist as you’ll find”) writes: “John Kay’s view in the FT http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/77b1bd26-14db-11de-8cd1-0000779fd2ac.html#axzz17MJEMHNx comes closest to my own: " ‘a larger source of irritation is the authors’ apparent belief that the application of regression methods to economic and social statistics is as novel to social science as it apparently is to medicine. The evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them. No data is provided on the estimated equations, or on relevant statistical tests. If you remove the bold lines from the diagram, the pattern of points mostly looks random, and the data dominated by a few outliers.’ " http://previousleigh.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/look-at-the-changes-not-at-the-levels/ Here is David Runciman (Senior Lecturer in Political Theory at Trinity College Cambridge), in the well-left-of-centre London Review of Books: “Why then, given all this – the concise argument, the weight of the evidence, the unmistakable practical purpose of the authors – does the book still feel oddly utopian? Part of the problem, I think, is that the argument is not as straightforward as its authors would like. Despite their obvious sense of conviction, and maybe even because of it, they fudge the central issue at crucial moments, whereas at others, perhaps in order to compensate, they overstate their case, which only makes things worse.” http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n20/david-runciman/how-messy-it-all-is And from Christian Bjørnskov (Associate Professor of Economics, University of Aarhus, Sweden): “To ordinary readers without firm statistical training, this approach appears to represent careful and 'painstakingly marshaled' evidence, as The Economist put it. However, to readers with a background in economics or political science, the evidence in the book is wanting. When seeing strong conclusions drawn from scatter plots and other simple figures, for example, one has to ask three questions: 1) are the relations driven by outlier observations; 2) are the findings robust to controlling for other relevant factors; and 3) are the relations likely to be causal? Surprisingly often, Wilkinson and Pickett’s claims fail to address one or more of these questions. “The bottom line is that this is a well-written, stimulating polemic. It nevertheless suffers from the same problems as one-trick ponies: if the one trick does not impress you, the show is a failure. Wilkinson and Pickett’s trick simply does not hold up to empirical scrutiny.” http://nonicoclolasos.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/pdr-bjornskov-review-file.pdf Finally, John Goldthorpe, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Nuffield College, Oxford, in "European Social Review", 2009: “Questions might be raised about every link in this proposed causal chain originating in income inequality…[…] Wilkinson and Pickett have no time for nicely balanced judgements. They believe that the evidence they present shows beyond doubt that more equal societies ‘do better’, and they are also confident that they have the right explanation for why this is so... Their case is by no means so securely established as they try to make out... it has been called into question by other leading figures in the field – a fact that WP might have more fully acknowledged... WP’s inadequate, one-dimensional understanding of social stratification leads to major problems in their account of how the contextual effect is produced." http://esr.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/10/22/esr.jcp046.abstract Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org ------------------------------------------------ From: Christopher D. Green <chri...@yorku.ca> Subject: Re: The joy of stats Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:16:46 -0500 Stephen Black drew attention to: A remarkable graphical display of economic progress at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo Rosling fails to point out one of the most significant aspects of the data: almost all of the increases life expectancy come between incomes of $400 and $4000. Only relatively small increases occur between $4000 and $40,000 (which is, as Jim earlier noted, TEN TIMES as much of an increase in income). This is in line with the conclusions of the book I was "pushing" a few weeks ago: _The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone_. More important than just life expectancy, the same thing is roughly true for any measure of the quality of life. We appear to have reached something of a ceiling in the ability of money to improve the quality of our lives. Sure, it's great to have your own monster house or yacht or airplane, but the increase in happiness it produces, on a dollar for dollar basis, is minuscule compared to what the first few thousand dollars of income does for one's life. What does seem to produce big increases in quality of life measures, even for those at the top of the income scale, is living in more equal societies. I know -- these are nearly unsayable words in today's America (but then again, evolution by natural selection is almost unsayable as well). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7239 or send a blank email to leave-7239-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
