Comment by gnramires
2 years ago
I think the core message is that a child's life is strongly determined by his family life/environment, it's not just a personal choice to succeed or to fail.
So if we want people to have better outcomes, we need to help better family lives/environments (and lives in general) to break the cycle, and not just give them basic education. Also, the family is just a group of individuals that probably themselves have come from poor conditions: this means there's hope of breaking the cycle.
Where in the data does it indicate that it's possible to "break the cycle"?
In the presentation it talked about college, even a short amount, can give better outcomes.
But the presentation was more of an overview of the issue, and I don't think it's fair to argue that, because it doesn't go deeply into every data point, that it's not valid. It more about bring awareness to the issues, and grounds for further research.
It shows that family/environment influences life outcomes (it should be obvious); it's not conclusive (in establishing causation), it does show a correlation. I really think it's almost obvious this is true, but it's important reinforcing with data nonetheless.
So you can break (or weaken) the cycle if you improve those conditions, and this improvement propagates.
> It shows that family/environment influences life outcomes
Not to nitpick but this statement implies causation (family environment causes life outcome) which you contradict right after.
Sorry to sound obtuse, but, I asked because it may seem obvious to you, but it's not so obvious to me that there will be much improvement. I've seen data that indicates that outcomes are not changed (much) when those early interventions / "investments" are made. There is _an_ improvement, but not to the level people expect. Like a person's height, access to high quality food will only do so much; some people are just going to have short stature however much money you invest into making sure they have access to nutritious meals.