Fragmentary Facts and Hypotheses About Identity And More

This post will proceed to set forth some facts and some factually supported theories that are related to each other, without necessarily assembling the pieces of the puzzle into a comprehensive description or worldview, and without necessarily fully articulating their relationship either.

Insights From Anthropology

* It is a hypothesis that ethnicity, defined as a group of people who are part of the same cultural community, is something that really exists and profoundly influences the life experiences that a person has, even when applied in a fairly crude manner.

* It is a fact that ethnicity is significantly correlated with shared genetic ancestry associated with a a shared history of particular geographical areas, historical migrations, and admixture events.

* It is a fact that the way the boundaries between one ethnicity and another, and the content of those ethnicities has changed over time, and is not entirely uniform in different places. In other words, within larger communities containing multiple ethnic communities, the structure of the system of ethnicities that is understood on a shared basis by the members of the larger communities is socially constructed (although not within the control of any one individual).

* It is a hypothesis that the influence that ethnicity has on a person's life experiences has more to do with the culture associated with an ethnicity than it does with a person's genetic ancestry.

* It is a hypothesis that every culture is more functional in some circumstances than it is in other circumstances; at any given time and place, some cultures will be more functional for their members than others.

* It is a hypothesis that on average, women, in general, assimilate into a new culture more readily when immersed in a culture different from that of their earlier childhood or that of their parents, than men.

* It is a fact that many prehistoric and pre-modern cultures in Europe were strongly patrilocal. Hence, men stayed in the communities and extended family units where they were born, while the women they married relocated to be with their husbands moving away from their place of birth.

* But, it is also a fact that many shifts from one culture to another have involved male dominated migrations to a new territory in which the migrating men had children mostly with local women and displaced the population genetic impact of local men.

Socio-Economic Success, Education and Military Experience

* It is a fact that African-American women have much more academic success and on average attain more education than African-American men. For example, African-American women are significantly more likely to have some college, to have an associate's degree, to have a four year degree, and to have a graduate degree than African-American men. The following chart illustrates part of this trend:

African-American men are about a third less likely to earn a four year college degree than African-American women (the gap between white women and white men is about 22%). Unsurprisingly, there is also a large African-American gender gap in college enrollment: "black women hold a large lead over black men in almost every facet of higher education. Black women currently earn about two thirds of all African-American bachelor's degree awards, 70 percent of all master's degrees, and more than 60 percent of all doctorates. Black women also hold a majority of all African-American enrollments in law, medical, and dental schools. Looking exclusively to undergraduate higher education, the latest Department of Education figures show that black women account for 63.6 percent of all African-American enrollments." 

Similarly, at the high school level: "In 2013, the completion rate for black males (83.5 percent) was 5.9 percentage points lower than black females[.]" Thus, 16.5% of black males were high school dropouts, while 10.6% of black females were high school dropouts, so black males made up about 61% of black high school dropouts. As noted below, it is highly implausible that this significant gap can be explained by IQ differences.

* It is a fact that African-American women are more socio-economically successful in the U.S. than African-American men, compared to their same gender peers of other ethnicities (according to the linked source: "black women in America have for many years achieved virtual wage and employment parity with non-black women, whereas black male wages end employment status remains far behind the comparable status for non-black men.")

* It is a hypothesis that the socio-economic prospects of women who have less education and are from a lower socio-economic class suffer fewer economic opportunity costs by leaving the work force temporary to have children than women with more education from a higher socio-economic class.

* It is a fact that the education and employment opportunities of women have dramatically improved since 1970.

* It is a fact that whites and Asians, on average, are more successful socio-economically on almost every conceivable measure of socio-economic success than African-Americans in the United States.

* It is a fact that people with less education are more likely to be unemployed that people with more education.

* It is a fact that African-Americans with a given level of education are, on average, more likely to be unemployed than whites and Asian with the same level of education.

* It is a fact that the average earnings of men with a high school education have increased very little since the 1970s in excess of inflation, while the average earnings of men with a four year college degree have participated in most of the economic growth the economy has experience in excess of inflation since the 1970s.

* It is a fact that the average earnings of women at all levels of education has increased significantly in excess of inflation since the 1970s.

* It is a hypothesis that a substantial share of the disparity in earnings between men and women in the U.S. economy is attributable to the time that women spend outside of the workforce or less intensely engaged in the workforce while focusing on raising children.

* It is a hypothesis that the disparity in earnings between women who do not have children and men in the U.S. economy is quite modest, particularly after controlling for choice of occupation.

* It is a fact that occupations with a large percentage of women tend to pay less than professions with a large percentage of men that require comparable amounts of education and training. 

* It is a hypothesis that whites in "Red States" (more precisely in geographical regions more fine-grained than state lines where the white cultures and ethnicities associated with the South and Appalachia are most common) are, on average, less successful socio-economically on almost every conceivable measure of socio-economic success than whites elsewhere in the United States, and that the same distinctions can be observed by using other proxies for different white ethnicities in the United States such as ancestry and religion, even though they are more successful socio-economically on almost every conceivable measure of socio-economic success than African-Americans in the same regions.

* It is a fact that some African-American immigrant populations in the United States, for example, Nigerian immigrants, are more socio-economically and educationally successful than native born African-Americans.

* It is a fact that Cuban-Americans in the United States are more socio-economically successful than most other Hispanic populations in the United States.

* It is a fact that second and later generation immigrants to the United States are less distinguishable from the general population of the United States than first generation immigrants to the United States, on average, in terms of education, health, socio-economic status, endogamy, religion and almost every other measure.

* A not immaterial number of Americans immigrated to the United States as foreign adoptees or as prospective spouses of U.S. residents (i.e. "mail order brides").

* It is a fact that the percentage of native born Americans who earn at least high school diplomas, who have at least some college, who earn a college degree and who earn a graduate degree has increased, both for men and for women, in every ethnicity in the United States, since 1970, while the percentage of native born Americans who do not earn a high school diploma has declined, both for men and for women, in every ethnicity in the United States, since 1970.

* It is a fact that income and wealth inequality in the United States, have increased steadily, with only temporary interruptions during recessions, since the 1970s.

* It is true that the ratio of active duty military personnel in the United States military to the population of the United States is at or close to the lowest level it has been at since prior to World War II.

* The draft most recently started in the United States in 1940 and ended on January 27, 1973. The youngest men who had to register for the draft at a time when people were still being drafted are now 67 years old. People who had to register for the draft when it was instated in 1940 are now at least 96 years old. No one who was subject to conscription is now below the Social Security retirement age.

* Private sector unionization rates in the United States have declined significantly since the 1970s and are near record lows in the history of the union movement pre-dating the major national labor laws in the United States. The public sector in the United States is unionized at a much higher rate.

IQ, Genetics and Environment

* It is a hypothesis that genes associated with IQ predominantly establish a person's peak potential IQ if that person has a sufficiently favorable environment, rather than being a cause of IQ that is independent of environment.

* It is a fact that phenotypic IQ has a strong hereditary component, some of which has been associated with particular genes.

* It is a fact that twenty-two and a half chromosomes of African-American women are no different than those of African-American men, on average.

* It is a fact that IQ is massively polygenetic and that genes correlated with IQ are not exclusively or predominantly found on sex chromosomes.

* It is a fact that phenotypic IQ appears to be less of a function of heredity in people who are in poverty than in people who have more comfortable lives.

* It is a fact that average IQ in countries changes over time in what is known as the Flynn Effect when it rises, although overall declines in a country's IQ over time have also been observed.

* It is a fact that exposure to certain environmental factors such as lead, and the absence of certain nutrients during a mother's pregnancy and a child's infancy, can depress IQ, sometimes to the point of a developmental disability operationally defined primarily by a child's low IQ.

* The gap in SAT math section scores between African-American boys and African-American girls is much smaller than for all other ethnicities (8 points v. 24-32 points for other ethnicities). 

* It is a hypothesis that immigrant populations from a country to the U.S. are frequently very atypical in IQ of residents of the source country as a function of the basis for their migration to the U.S.

* It is a fact that there are currently significant differences in average measured IQ scores between members of different ethnicities in the United States (see, e.g., here). The reasons for these disparities is hotly disputed, although some of the differences are a product of recent immigration history (e.g. policies mostly allowing the immigration only of college educated STEM professionals from certain countries at certain times in recent history).

* It is a fact that there are currently significant differences in average measured IQ scores between residents of different countries in the world. The reasons for these disparities is hotly disputed.

* It is a fact that the population genetic history and historical migration history of essentially all ethnicities in the United States is reasonably well understood from both historical and genealogical records and from DNA testing with large sample sizes and high coverage.

* It is likewise a fact that all Americans except pure blooded Native Americans (including indigenous peoples of any of the Americas), have a most recent ancestor to arrive in the United States within the last 525 years, and only a fairly small minority of Native Americans in the United States are "pure blooded" in the sense of not having any genetically discernible post-Columbian ancestry from outside North America and South America. Furthermore, even "pure blooded" Native Hawaiians and "pure blooded" Inuits in Alaska have most recent ancestors in the Americas on the order of 2000 years ago or less.

* It is a hypothesis that the time depth of the most recent ancestor to arrive in the United States for the median American is probably less than 140 years.

Crime

* It is a fact that African-American men are much more likely to have criminal records, to have been convicted of felonies, and to have been incarcerated, than men in any other major U.S. ethnicity and than women in any other major U.S. ethnicity.

* It is a fact that African-American males who are juveniles are much more likely to be subject to official discipline in school and to have run-ins with the juvenile justice system.

* It is a fact that African-Americans are treated more harshly at pretty much every level of the criminal justice system for comparable conduct, from exercises of discretion by police officers to criminal sentencing following convictions for crimes, than whites.

* It is a fact that state murder rates are much more strongly correlated with the percentage of the population that is African-American than with any measure of the state's socio-economic health (e.g. poverty rates or median income), the percentage of the population that is foreign born, the percentage of the population that is Hispanic, the adoption of the death penalty, or the adoption of gun control measures. The percentage of the population that is African-American is the first order predictor of a state's murder rate.

* It is a fact that most African-Americans who are murdered are murdered by other African-Americans and that most whites who are murdered are murdered by other whites.

* It is a fact that women are much less likely to have criminal records, to have been convicted of felonies, and to have been incarcerated then men of the same race and ethnicity in every culture on Earth.

* It is a fact that men of every ethnicity commit far more violent crimes than women of the same ethnicity.

* It is a fact that a significant share of crimes for which women are punished in the criminal justice system are crimes in which they were co-participants with adult or young adult men who played significant roles in their lives.

* It is a fact that almost everywhere in the United States, crime rates have fallen precipitously between 1990 and the present.

* There is a correlation between the decline in the crime rate in the U.S. and both the availability of legal abortion and declining exposure to lead in the environment (deferred by the time those changes needed to reach young adult men), although causation and magnitude of those effects, if any, is not definitively established.

Life Expectancy

* It is a fact that the life expectancy of Native Americans who live on or near Indian Reservations is at least as low as the life expectancy of people in any other geographic regions in the United States.

* It is a fact that the pockets of the lowest life expectancy in the United States outside of Indian Reservations are in "Red States".

* It is a hypothesis that these differences in life expectancy are strongly mediated by different cultural practices which are associated significantly with ethnicity, with cultural differences playing a particularly important part in life expectancy differences associated with infant mortality, diet and deaths from accidents, homicides and suicides.

* It is a hypothesis that differences in life expectancy due to hereditary vulnerability to diseases associated with the genetic makeup of members of an ethnicity is not a significant source of differences in life expectancy between members of different ethnicities in the United States.

* It is a fact that foreign born immigrant populations in the U.S. have better health outcomes by almost every measure than people in the country from which they immigrated.

Fertility and Marriage

* It is a hypothesis that best first order predictor of whether a heterosexual couple gets married, and stays married, is whether a woman believes that her husband or prospective husband is able to add economic value to the marriage. Operationally, this is well measured by whether the husband or prospective husband is employed and earned more than the wife, or is likely to be employed and to earn more than the wife upon entering the work force. There are second order and yet less important factors that also influence whether people get married and stay married, but the first order analysis is enough to explain most of the general trends that are observed.

* It is a fact that African-American women are much less likely to be married than white and Asian women, and are much more likely to have children outside of wedlock.

* It is a fact that out of wedlock child bearing has become much more common for all races and ethnicities since 1970.

* It is a fact that exogamy across ethnic lines is more common among women than men for second generation Hispanics in the U.S., second generation Asia-Americans in the U.S., and non-Hassidic Jewish women in the U.S.

* It is a fact that interracial and interethnic marriage rates are rising.

* It is a fact that median age at first marriage has increased steadily in the United States since 1970.

* It is a fact that the average number of children per woman per lifetime has decreased significantly in the United States from the Baby Boom in the 1950s and 1960s to the present.

* It is a fact that the rate at which women under the age of 30 have children in the United States is at an all time low.

* It is a fact that teen birth rates have declined for every ethnicity in the United States since 1970 and are near an all time low.

* It is a fact that more than 90% of women have children during their lives, and that they have their first child between the ages of 15 and 44.

* It is a fact that most women who have children, either leave the work force for a significant period of time, or reduce the intensity of their participation in the work force for a significant period of time, to focus on raising their children.

* It is a fact that more than 90% of men in all but a handful of countries and all but a tiny subset of highly differentiated ethnicities in the U.S. have children during their working lives.

* It is a fact that most men who have children do not leave the work force for a significant period of time, or substantially reduce the intensity of their participation in the work force for a significant period of time, when they have children.

* It is a fact that men who are incarcerated, men who have low levels of education such as dropping out of high school, and men who have weak success in the employment markets have at least as many, or almost as many, children over the course of their lifetimes as men with no criminal records, men who have high levels of education such as four year college degrees and graduate degrees, and men who are very successful in the employment markets.

* It is a fact that couples with only high school levels of education are much less likely to marry and more likely to divorce if they do marry, than couples with four year college degrees or more, and that this holds among whites, among African-Americans and among Hispanics.

* Abortion rates in the U.S., both relative to the number of fertile women and relative to the number of live births peaked around 1980 and have more or less steadily declined since then to today's levels which are comparable to those in 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

* African-American women obtain abortions at significantly higher rates than white women.

Religion

* It is a fact that a significant share of adults in the United States change their religious affiliation to a different religion or a different denomination or sect of the same religion during their lifetimes.

* It is a fact that in the United States, people who identify as non-Christian are more likely to have a liberal or Democratic party political leaning than people who identify as Christian, for almost every variety of non-Christian (considering Mormons, for this purpose, to be Christians).

* It is a fact that in the South and Appalachia (apart from Florida, Louisiana and Texas which were historically part of Spain or Mexico or France and have significant Catholic populations, and in the case of Florida, also a significant Jewish population), people who are Catholic, Lutheran, Orthodox Christian, Jewish, Mormon, Unitarian-Universalist, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jain, Shinto, Buddhist and neo-pagan are all much less common than in the United States as a whole. Put another way, almost everyone in those places who is not non-religious is a Protestant Christian, and those who are Protestant Christian are predominantly adherents of conservative historically white Christian denominations (basically Evangelicals).

* It is a fact that the number of adherents of historically white mainline Christian denominations in the United States has plummeted over the last several decades.

* Most U.S. Protestant religious denominations split along mainline and conservative lines in connection with the North-South fights over race and slavery in 19th and early 20th centuries.

* Almost all Christian religious denominations in the United States are historically white or historically black, although this is slightly less true with respect to Roman Catholicism (in recent history, it was, of course, historically Mediterranean if one goes back far enough).

* It is a fact that the number of white Catholics in the United States has plummeted over the last several decades, a decline comparable to that of native born whites in other Christian denominations that are historically white that has been masked by Catholic immigration most of which has been Hispanic.

* It is a fact that the number of adherents of historically white conservative Christian denominations has fallen over the last several decades, although not as fast as the number of historically white mainline Christians and native born white Catholics.

* Many people whose ancestors identified with a historically white conservative Christian denomination now identify as non-denominational Christians.

* It is a fact that the number of people who identify as non-religious has surged over the last several decades.

* It is a fact that religious denominations associated with "Red States" and the white cultures and ethnicities associated with the South and Appalachia have members with less education on average, lower college admission test scores on average, and lower earnings on average, than religious denominations associated with other white cultures and ethnicities.

* It is a fact that Europe saw a significant decline in the intensity of religious activity by native born Europeans and in identification with the respective historical established churches of the various European countries after World War II, but several decades before the United States experienced a similar decline.

* It is a fact that adherents of Evangelical Christian denominations or other Christian denominations comparable to white conservative Christian denominations in the United States, do not make up a large percentage of the population of any European country. 

* It is a fact that adherents of Christian denominations comparable to white conservative Christian denominations in the United States are, however, a significant share of Christian populations in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Oceania and parts of Southeast Asia and East Asia, and that these adherents are ultimately traceable to U.S. missionary efforts.