Good storytelling and bad argument

Here is an article by Jason DeParle from the NYT that encapsulates many of the themes discussed on this blog in the past couple of years, principally what causes individual and social outcomes and what are the parameters of who benefits and what are the parameters of who bears an obligation to others. And finally the overarching theme of what are the critical elements of northwestern European culture of humanism, empiricism, age of enlightenment values that have rendered subsequent cultures (and individuals) so productive and which of those values remain critical moving forward. The article also serves as an illustration of what happens when someone nominally logical and rational, which I presume Jason DeParle to be, has to deal with both narrative and data that contradicts his own worldview.

In this case his story and the data says that there are many negative consequences to single parenthood, that those consequences are material and long lasting and that they are the result of both changing values and changing decision-making on the part of individuals. What DeParle appears to want to believe is that single parent families are the victims of changing economic circumstances and other factors such as racism. The article is filled with hidden assumptions which betray a particular cast of mind which can only survive on the sustenance of bad reasoning.

The article is an attempt to fuse a narrative (story of two contrasting lives) with data that underpins the contrasts between the two families. The article also, though, is a wonderful illustration of how a reporter can allow emotionalism or ideology to cloud his own argument. There are multiple instances through the article where the reporter renders data so that it seems to indicate the opposite of what it actually says. It becomes clear that the reporter wishes to believe that the two protagonists are subjects of impersonal forces acting on them, rather than (as Classical Liberalism would have) as agents who act on the randomness of the world to extract the best outcome they can achieve. Both protagonists are rather sympathetic but both of them seem to illustrate exactly the opposite of what the reporter wants readers to conclude. Schairer (the poor family) says it herself. ‘“I’m in this position because of decisions I made,” she said.’

Take this example.

Despite the egalitarian trappings of her youth, Ms. Schairer was born (in 1981) as a tidal surge of inequality was remaking American life. Incomes at the top soared, progress in the middle stalled and the paychecks of the poor fell sharply.

Notice the passive voice instead of the active in “a tidal surge of inequality was remaking American life.” But think about it. Take it out of the passive. Did inequality drive the changes in American life? Or did changes in American life change inequality? The data in the article as well as the life stories he is reporting suggest changes in values and decision-making behavior came first and drove the bad outcomes. Yet the reporter can’t help but take the burden of responsibility away from individuals. Stuff happens to them. They don’t cause what happens to them.

Here is another example of the reporter trying to distance decisions from consequences.

She got pregnant during her first year of college, left school and stayed in a troubled relationship that left her with three children when it finally collapsed six years ago.

Again, notice the passive writing. “A troubled relationship left her with three children.” Put it in the active voice and you have the hard fact that she had a prolonged troubled relationship and she had three children. The troubled relationship did not cause the three children. She chose them or chose actions that led to them.

Another example. Look at the first two pictures in the picture gallery. They are supposed to represent parallel boys, one in a family at the brink of poverty and one well ensconced in prosperity. But can you actually tell that looking at the materials in their respective rooms? I can’t. With just a quick glance, I see three contrasts between the two pictures, none of them having to do with material markers of prosperity. In one, the boy is listless staring off into space in the middle of a clean but chaotic, disorganized room. In the other, the boy is focused and engaged, sitting in the middle of a clean organized room. In the background there is a man doing laundry. If you only had those two pictures as data points, knew nothing else and were commanded to place a $1,000 bet on which boy would grow to be successful, which would you choose? I would wager 90% would pick boy two even if they were unconscious of reasons why they did so. In a high volume, high velocity, high churn, dynamic life environment, all of us make decisions on the barest of information. Each decision then has a compounding effect. Which of these two boys is more often going to get the benefit of the doubt by somebody making a split-second decision?

Some of the sentences are so mangled as to hardly make sense. You have to fill in a lot of unstated assumptions to really understand what the reporter is trying to say.

Economic woes speed marital decline, as women see fewer “marriageable men.”

Take the first element and recollect the discussion pyramid.

Economic woes speed marital decline – Really? Literally is that real? Break it further into two parts

Everyone is far more prosperous (both in terms of income and in terms of wealth) today than fifty years ago and yet there is a decline in marriage rates from 72% in 1960 to 51% in 2010. So if people are materially better off but are marrying less, is that consistent with “economic woes speed marital decline”? Doesn’t seem like it. The statistics would say that the wealthier you become over time, the less likely you are to marry. Even in the lowest quintiles real income and real wealth are up but that is where the decline in marriage is concentrated. So the statistical link between marriage and prosperity appears to be weak from a causative perspective. No doubt there are individuals where economic circumstances prevent marriage or exacerbate problems in a marriage leading to divorce. But policy is not made based on anecdotes and the exceptions. Again, it seems the reporter has gotten his own story backwards. In the bulk of the article he is showing that declining marriage speeds economic woes. It is nice to blame the economy but keep your story straight.

Interestingly, what the reporter’s data says, and which he omits to link together, is that 1) Over fifty years the US has become much wealthier and average real incomes have increased for everyone, for some faster than others. 2) Over those fifty years, marriage rates have declined by 30% (from 72 to 51) while everyone was becoming wealthier and richer (income). 3) Income inequality has risen in those decades from 5:1 to 10:1 between the richest and poorest 10% of the population. 4) Those among the richest whose incomes have increased the fastest have maintained or increased their traditional high rates of marriage. Those among the poorest whose real incomes have stagnated have seen their marriage rates plummet. The logical conclusion one would draw from this sequence of factual statements is that either marriage itself or the behaviors and values that sustain a marriage are directly correlated with large increases in individual and familial productivity. So what do you do if you want to decrease income inequality? Seems like marriage or the values and behaviors that sustain marriage have to be in the mix of solutions but that is not offered by the reporter.

The second part, ‘women see fewer “marriageable men.”’ – Really? Do women not marry because they see fewer marriageable men? Is it that men have become less attractive in some fashion, or that women have changed their expectations. Or is it men that are choosing not to marry? I don’t know without researching it. While the explanation is at least plausible it is extremely imprecise and therefore on the face of it improbable. I can come up with any number of potential reasons why men or women might be electing not to marry at the same rates as in the past. Data has to tell me which speculations have any grounding in reality. I doubt, once rendered into a rigorous proposition, that fewer “marriageable men” is a tenable root cause. Trade-offs and choices.

The Pew Charitable Trust had a recent report on this issue and which seems to be the basis of parts of this article and it indicates:

Fallout from the Great Recession may be a factor in the recent decrease in newlyweds, although the linkage between marriage rates and economic hard times is not entirely clear.

So the author is making a statement that removes the burden of responsibility from the unmarried parent but in a fashion that contradicts the rest of his article as well as the empirical research on which the article is based.

Here’s where we begin to get to the heart of the issue. What argument is the reporter making?

But for inequality more broadly, Mr. Western found that the growth in single parenthood in recent decades accounted for 15 percent to 25 percent of the widening income gaps. (Estimates depend on the time period, the income tiers and the definition of inequality.) Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution found it to account for 21 percent. Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute, comparing lower-middle- and upper-middle-income families, found that single parenthood explained about 40 percent of inequality’s growth. “That’s not peanuts,” he said.

Across Middle America, single motherhood has moved from an anomaly to a norm with head-turning speed. (That change received a burst of attention this year with the publication of Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” which attributed the decline of marriage to the erosion of values, rather than the decline of economic opportunity.)

From that last paragraph, the reporter appears to be making the argument that decline in economic opportunity is the driver rather than Murray’s argument of decline in values. But the reporter’s own reporting this far into the article has already demonstrated that change in values preceded change in personal economic decline.

The author’s straining to remove accountability from the individual is played out further down the article.

Scott Winship of the Brookings Institution examined the class trajectories of 2,400 Americans now in their mid-20s. Among those raised in the poorest third as teenagers, 58 percent living with two parents moved up to a higher level as adults, compared with just 44 percent of those with an absent parent.

A parallel story played out at the top: just 15 percent of teenagers living with two parents fell to the bottom third, compared with 27 percent of teenagers without both parents.

“You’re more likely to rise out of the bottom if you live with two parents, and you’re less likely to fall out of the top,” Mr. Winship said.

Mr. Winship interprets his own results cautiously, warning that other differences (like race, education or parenting styles) may also separate the two groups. And even if marriage helped the people who got married, he warns, it might hurt other families if it tied them to troubled men.

“Interprets his own results cautiously” really means “wants to avoid the obvious conclusion”. Charles Murray wrote his book focusing on whites because he wanted to remove the issue of race from the possible causes. Murray found identical results to Winship (in terms of mobility), so Winship’s explanation of race (in the last paragraph) as a possible cause of differences is disqualified. Yet the reporter allows it to be introduced though he must be aware that it is wrong.

Again, the reporter seems to be straining to make the participants in this morality play to be the victims of impersonal forces such as globalization, declining economic opportunity and racism and to similarly make the argument that rising income inequality is rooted in globalization, declining economic opportunity and racism. In fact the entire article, despite the reporter’s gloss, seems an endorsement of all the Classical Liberal/Age of Enlightenment bedrock beliefs such as agency, effort, family, etc.

Ms. Shairer seems a very sympathetic character. She was raised in comfortable circumstances, she had the full range of opportunities made available by the wealthiest country in the world. She made some bad decisions, each compounding the other, which cumulatively have had a very material impact on her prosperity. She continues to do the right things, seeks the best for her children, works hard, hopes for the best, takes responsibility for decisions rather than trying to ascribe her circumstances to the actions of others. I wish her the best.

But the reporter wants to make her a victim. By doing so he disrespects her and misdirects the reader.

In some ways this is similar to a news report three or four years ago as the foreclosure crisis appeared to be cresting. I think it was NPR rather than NYT but the report was intended to show a middle class victim of the foreclosure crisis suffering the travails imposed by an inequitable system. When you listened to the report though, all the problems seemed to be sourced to the quality (or lack thereof) of decision-making by the protagonist. My recollection is that it went something like this. She held a solid middle management salaried job in NYC. She was divorced and had a single adolescent daughter. She decided to move to Florida to be near family. She quit her job in NYC without first having found one in Florida (mistake one). She was enamored with the space in Florida and cheapness of real estate compared to NYC and ended up buying a four bedroom home for she and her daughter (mistake two). She took out a no money down balloon mortgage (mistake three). She did not read the contract or forecast her monthly payments (mistake four). Etc. All classic bad decisions likely to lead to trouble. So the report, which was intended to make out the financial institutions to be the cruel bad guys (and no doubt they also made bad decisions), ended up making the protagonist to appear the lead author in her own tragic downfall.

This article by DeParle is actually a pleasant read about a relevant and concerning issue but it illustrates how important it is to constantly read materials with a skeptical cast of mind to understand the difference between information that is being offered (which supports one conclusion) versus the narrative into which it is being forced to fit (which leads to a different conclusion).