

Nature vs Nurture: Rich parents have rich children, but not if they adopt - yummyfajitas
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/08/the-inheritance-of-education.html

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TomOfTTB
There are too many variables in the cited study to really draw a conclusion
one way or the other. Just the ones I can think of off the top of my head

\- Race plays a part. This study was done with Korean Infants adopted around
30 years ago when race played a much greater role in success

\- Age at adoption plays a part. If there’s one thing that gets hammered into
American parents it’s that nutrition during the infant years has an impact on
a child’s life. If someone is, for example, malnourished during their infant
years there can be severe physical and neurological consequences.

\- Genetics certainly play a part. Let’s be realistic here, Intelligence is at
least part genetic. I got As in High School without even trying while friends
with more affluent parents struggled. Is there really anyone who doesn’t
believe intelligence is at least partially genetic?

There are probably tons more if I spent some time thinking on it. Bottom line:
The study proves nothing. Moreover I suspect the question of whether adopted
kids can be as successful as biological ones is far too vast to really have a
definitive answer.

~~~
dlytle
In regards to your race statement, I agree with your intent, but it's not
really race; it's about social and cultural perceptions of race. Thirty years
ago things were very different for inter-racial families than they are now,
and that varies fairly widely based on area. If they don't include the areas
in which the subjects lived, their dataset is critically flawed.

My sister and I are both adopted, and she was adopted from Korea at around 6
months. She was an honor student every year she was in high school in
Maryland, and she was just one of the girls; she was never treated any
differently than anyone else because of her race. (At least, not that any of
us noticed.)

We moved to Colorado, and her school performance took a hit. This was
partially due to her being one of the only asians in her school, and standing
out because of it. A wonderful example is how a pair of her peers bought her a
bag of rice for her birthday. (I wish I was joking.) The social effects of her
race impacted her school performance.

In my case, I've found out that my birth brothers aren't as successful or as
educated as I've been. All three of us have ADHD, and all the problems that
come with it, so it's not just biology.

In my (very biased) experience, we start out with a baseline derived from our
genetics; our chemical imbalances and natural aptitudes. The positives and
negatives of those are modified from the baseline by our upbringing, parents,
and education. Then our social experiences shift that even further in one way
or another.

Anyway, this study is useless on its own. If they did a comparison against
Korean families adopting Koreans, and compared that to white families adopting
whites, they'd have something useful. They MIGHT be able to successfully
identify how much of the difference is related to adoption, and how much is
related to race.

As is, it's an interesting but worthless data point.

------
tokenadult
I went to the abstract of the cited paper

<http://www.nber.org/papers/w10894>

but didn't see much there that would help me check for warning signs in
experimental design and interpretation,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

which I generally like to do. Does anyone have access to the complete NBER
working paper or to a more thorough description of the underlying study?

~~~
Donald
A freely accessible version is available from the author's website:
<http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bsacerdo/HoltAdoptionPaper2.doc>

~~~
dlytle
Holt's where we got my sister from. I guess they're one of the biggest Korean
adoption agencies. Makes sense that the study was based around their data.

------
MaysonL
Money quote from the paper:

"The survey measure of family income is much higher for the non-adoptees than
for the adoptees: $61,000 per year versus $42,000 per year. But this huge
difference narrows to $1,600 when I control for age, education, and gender. "

------
andreyf
Also, prime example of how _not_ to use a line chart...

------
californiaguy
Let's not kid ourselves here, inter-racial adoption is a totally horseshit
dataset for this kind of analysis. There are way too many psychological
variables and societal barriers that are unaccounted for.

------
ilkhd2
Well, I think there is grain of truth in this research... ...but, I measures
only one variable, frankly irrelevant, without taking into account another
one,which is amount of happiness these adopted kids have in their adult lifes
for the amount of money they make. I mean, every person differs on scale how
material he/she i, and that trait probably is inheritable. For example, USA
has rather low quality of live compared to GDP per capita, but Canada is
opposite - gives better quality of live with lower GDP per capita. However
Canada has less opportunity to become super-rich. So when people choose where
to immigrate to, depending on personality the can make choice. My point is -
if these kids, who is as happy as their peers despite having lower income,
that is very good, it means the spend less resources to "maintain lifestyle",
less neurotic etc.

