Hillbilly Elegy

Source: giphy dot com

Let me get right to the spoiler: the one weird trick is science . . . psychology, to be exact. Yes, I am saying that psychology could end poverty.

And now the back-story for this wonderful conclusion.

Hillbilly Elegy: A memoir of a family and culture in crisis is an autobiography written by J. D. Vance. Vance’s book is the heartwarming tale of a poor white kid who made good by becoming a Marine, going to Ohio State University, and then going to Yale Law School. His advice to others of his ilk is: Be a better, happier person by making better decisions. Poverty, according to Vance, is rooted in the poor making bad decisions.

Hillbilly Elegy has something for everyone, and something everyone won’t like. One point of the book is that the story arc of President Trump's rise to power is false. That arc: mean old, bad liberal government makes people poor by doling out hundreds of millions of dollars for "welfare mothers," allowing illegal Muslims and Mexicans into the country, and taxing everyone too much. In short, the mean old, bad liberal government teaches people learned helplessness and denies Americans the opportunity to succeed. But Vance denies this. He does think that government can help. Yet, Vance does assert that government is not the golden solution. Instead he argues that the poor suffer from a learned lack of moral agency: poverty is not something done to them, it is something they create via their bad decisions (e.g., dropping out of school, getting addicted to drugs and alcohol, getting pregnant before having a secure job, not showing up to work on time, etc.)

But this isn’t quite right is it? Government is more of a problem and it could be more of a solution than Vance and his followers think.

The current government of the United States, before it became the ruling government, strongly and openly encouraged rebellion against the previous “liberal” government (some say “the previous liberal black government,” focusing on President Obama). One striking instance of this fanned rebellion was the then opposition government’s denouncing the Affordable Care Act as socialism, as legally instituting death squads, as denying health care to elderly, etc. etc. Vance does say that rebelling against governments like the previous one, which was genuinely trying to help, is not productive and is not going to solve the problem of poverty. But he fails to acknowledge the role of the current government in encouraging this rebellion and in discouraging people from seeking and voting for the very help they need to extricate themselves from poverty. Of course government cannot solve the problems of poverty if the government isn’t allowed to solve the problems of poverty. Vance misses this entirely.

But there is something much deeper missing from Vance’s analysis. He graduated from Yale Law, not from Yale’s Psychology Department, so perhaps Vance can be excused here (I don't actually think he can). What is missing is science. It never occurs to Vance, nor to anyone reviewing his book (that I’ve found) that science could help fix poverty. (I have to note here that Vance’s book is apparently going to be made into a motion picture — I swear I’m not making this up . . . so Mr. Vance is going to be a millionaire. And science won't be mentioned in the movie, either.)

Exactly what science do I mean? Psychology. Here’s a relevant paper which no one praising or criticizing Hillbilly Elegy is even aware of. “On the psychology of poverty” Science 344, 862 (2014), by Johannes Haushofer and Ernst Fehr, DOI: 10.1126/science.1232491. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/862.full

Here is the abstract to this fascinating paper.

Poverty remains one of the most pressing problems facing the world; the mechanisms through which poverty arises and perpetuates itself, however, are not well understood. Here, we examine the evidence for the hypothesis that poverty may have particular psychological consequences that can lead to economic behaviors that make it difficult to escape poverty. The evidence indicates that poverty causes stress and negative affective states which in turn may lead to short-sighted and risk-averse decision-making, possibly by limiting attention and favoring habitual behaviors at the expense of goal-directed ones. Together, these relationships may constitute a feedback loop that contributes to the perpetuation of poverty. We conclude by pointing toward specific gaps in our knowledge and outlining poverty alleviation programs that this mechanism suggests. (My emphasis.)

Short form: Poverty causes the poor decision-making that Vance says poor people should just stop doing. Haushofer and Fehr imply that poor people cannot just stop making bad decisions — precisely because they are poor. Vance and everyone else has missed this because, apparently, they do not read Science.

A reader of this blog might be curious to know what poverty alleviation programs Haushofer and Fehr advocate. If shifting to a culture of greater personal responsibility doesn't work, and welfare programs haven't worked, what does?

Here is Haushofer’s and Fehr’s conclusion:

Finally, what types of welfare programs or interventions would break the [poverty relationships discussed in this paper]? If the proposed feedback loop holds true, three possibilities seem promising for breaking the cycle and improving welfare: The first is to target poverty directly, the second is to target its psychological consequences, and the third is to target the economic behaviors that result from them. These possibilities are not mutually exclusive, of course, but should be studied in isolation as well as in combination to understand their effect. With regard to the first possibility—targeting poverty directly—a number of studies have tested the effect of direct poverty alleviation programs on psychological outcomes and economic behavior. Most of these studies examine cash transfer programs, which have produced broadly encouraging results on general welfare in recent years . . . . Regarding the third possibility— targeting economic behaviors directly—a number of programs provide small nudges to economic behaviors with large positive welfare consequences— for instance, commitment savings accounts . . . , reminders to save, or the provision of a lockable metal box with a deposit slit at the top (like a piggy bank) . . . all led to considerable increases in savings. In our view, the second possibility, i.e., targeting the psychological consequences of poverty, holds much promise for future work. Although an early randomized controlled trial showed that group interpersonal psychotherapy helped people complete daily economic tasks in Uganda . . . , research on the economic effects of such interventions is otherwise still in its infancy. Most important, this study targeted depressed individuals, whereas the evidence discussed in this article shows that the debilitating effects of stress and negative affect on economic behavior may occur even in individuals who do not suffer from full-fledged clinical depression. This insight suggests that psychotherapy-like interventions may have economic benefits even in nonclinical populations . . . . More broadly, we propose that an increased understanding of the relationship between poverty, its psychological consequences, and their potentially disadvantageous effects on economic choice will lead to poverty alleviation programs that achieve two goals. First, they will take both the psychological costs of poverty and, conversely, the psychological benefits of poverty alleviation into account. Second, they will consider psychological variables as novel intervention targets for poverty alleviation. It is our hope that this will lead to a more refined understanding of poverty and thus contribute to the solution of this lingering global problem. [My emphases. Ellipses elide only citations.]

So, dear readers, psychological science could really help us end poverty. Vance's book is a bestseller, and yet everyone has missed that science could help with one of the most pressing problems of our age.

I am encouraged and depressed at once. Encouraged because science is coming to the rescue. Depressed because the United States is currently one of the most anti-science countries on the planet. Our president thinks that global warming is a Chinese hoax, and our vice-president thinks that the Earth is a few thousand years old. If psychological science can help end poverty, some other country will have to lead the way.