Studies Have Shown...

by Mona Shaw

“Studies have shown…” or “Academic research has demonstrated satisfactorily for a long, long time…” are common clauses that leave many believing the statement that follows the clause is a fact. 

It ain’t necessarily so.  Few bother to ask to have the study cited or have ever read any of these studies, or--when they do exist--to examine their methodology or their study sample, etc.  If we like the speaker’s credentials, we just accept it.

Beginning in 2003, I began to check out some assumptions that I’d formerly just accepted as a given.  I had heard some so many times, that I assumed they must be true.  Even so, I began to wonder and decided if I was going to repeat them, I wanted to know something about the studies upon which these assumptions were based.

Assumptions I’ve researched include:

Teenage pregnancies are up.

Receiving welfare keeps people on welfare for generations.

People with poor credit ratings are more apt to steal at work.

Poor people don’t vote.

Sexual assailants don’t benefit from therapy.

Poor people are more apt to be evangelical Christians.

Working class people are more apt to be racist.

It turns out these statements are false or misleading.

1.  Teen pregnancies are at an all-time low and have been decreasing for decades.

2.  Only 25% of those who grow up on public assistance collect public assistance as adults.

3.  There’s never been a study on the correlation between credit ratings and stealing on the job.  This is a myth that Auditing and Credit Rating firms began spreading to sell their products to businesses.

4. More poor people vote than any other voting bloc.  While it’s true the higher one’s income, the more one is apt to vote, when you factor in income per percentage of population, the hard numbers paint a different picture.

Let’s say 127,000,000 people vote in a POTUS election.  When adjusted by their percentage in population you get this.

59,000,000 people with incomes under than $30k/year voted. (50% of the populations at a 41% voter rate.)

10,500,000 people with incomes more than $100k/year voted (6% of the populations at 60% turnout)

57,000,000 people between comes of $30k and 100k voted) (42% of the populations at 50% turnout.)

When you extrapolate the very poor and the very rich you get this.

Just over 1,000,000 who earned more than $250k voted (1% of the populations at 80%)

5,500,000 of those earning less than 12k/year voted (30% of 14% of the population)

It’s difficult to know the truth about why poorer people are ignored, but they are sizeable voting blocks that could easily tip any election.

5.  While poor people are slightly more apt to be evangelical Christians, the margins aren’t that big, and they are in the minority among poor by far. In fact, those earning more than 50k/year are more apt to be evangelical Christians than those who earn less.  Only 25% of those under 30K are ECs, 24% (30-50K), 29% (50-99%) and 13% (100k and above.) 

Given that large evangelical churches are much more intense in their outreach to the poor (e.g. the Salvation Army and Southern Baptists), it’s surprising these numbers don’t skew more to the poor, but they don’t.

6.  In general offenders benefit greatly from therapy, and few reoffend.  While pedophiles don’t do as well, and cannot be “cured,” some do benefit. Just go look it up.

7.  Other than Archie Bunker, are working class and people more apt to be racist?  Again, there is no scientific study that I can find that has established this.  There are a few that begin with this assumption and attempt to analyze the basis of racial bias among lower-income classes.  In these it is usually acknowledged that where there is conflict for scarce resources, group boundaries are reinforced to increase survivability, and the most convenient method to identify oneself and others is through somatic markers, particularly skin color.  Political economists argue that it is issues of wealth and class that separate communities; that racism is simply the proxy.

Certainly, there is strong racial bias among some poor, but do we know it is less than among the elite?  While the elite have more techniques for camouflaging their bias, do they act on racism less or even feel less superior based on race?  There is nothing out there that analyzes racial bias among the affluent, which certainly exists and is far more dangerous.  Institutional racism is a control device invented by those in power to increase wealth and control workers.  The poor did not invent and do not have the power to execute it or perpetuate it.

It’s also important to note than lower-income people are far more likely to have mixed race families and inter-marry than the affluent.  They are also more likely to work in close proximity with people of other races and socialize in work environments.

I probably should foot-note this, but I’d rather not.  We need to question and study more.  That would be my point.