The Politics of Human Capital

by Will Wilkinson on May 18, 2008

At Club Troppo, Don Arthur has an excellent long post on the politics of the human capital approach to poverty and inequality. An excerpt:

These research findings on early childhood [which show the importance of the development of cognitive and emotional/self-regulatory capacities for later economic achievement] create a dilemma for egalitarians. On the one hand, the research suggests that publicly funded investments in early childhood could significantly improve the well being of children from disadvantaged families. But on the other hand, they seem to be stigmatising less educated adults — particularly those who are unable to work and depend on welfare benefits. The poor are portrayed as underdeveloped human beings — ignorant, lethargic and unable to control their impulses. Worse still, their parenting practices have been identified as an important cause of intergenerational disadvantage.

This has a familiar ring to it. In the early 19th century Alexis de Tocqueville warned that England’s system of poor relief was cultivating a class of unproductive and disorderly citizens:

The number of illegitimate children and criminals grows rapidly and continuously, the indigent population is limitless, the spirit of foresight and of saving becomes more and more alien to the poor. While throughout the rest of the nation education spreads, morals improve, tastes become more refined, manners more polished — the indigent remains motionless, or rather he goes backwards. He could be described as reverting to barbarism. Amidst the marvels of civilisation, he seems to emulate savage man in his ideas and his inclinations (pdf).

It’s a fear that’s never really gone away. Recently, the Age’s Russell Skelton spoke with a group of Indigenous elders in Walgett about the effect of the Australian government’s baby bonus:

“My daughter has four kids and she cannot read or write,” says a member of the group, who feels powerless as a parent. It will become a terrible circle, predicts another: “Kids who cannot read or write have babies that won’t be able to read or write. But nobody can tell them that. They don’t want to listen.”

Some egalitarians worry that embracing the rhetoric of human capital means joining with conservatives to slander to disadvantaged. Social welfare initiatives become less about social justice and more about social control. Instead of focusing on the obligations of the rich, the human capitalists increasingly focus on the behaviour of the poor.

I think this is a profound insight. And I think one can see the outlines of a workable third way here. On the one side are conservatives and libertarians overly attached to genetic explanations of socioeconomic achievement, who therefore see spending on early childhood development as futile. On the other side are liberals overly attached to abstract structural explanations of the reproduction of class, who therefore see a focus on state interventions in early childhood as elitist victim-blaming. I find that I actually side more with the liberal complaint than with the conservative one, though not so much for the reason that it is victim-blaming. Many poor parents are to a large extent to blame for the under-development of their children. There doesn’t seem to be a way around that. But I worry very much about the social control of the poor by elites, which Don mentions. However, I worry about the harms of self-reproducing poverty even more. At this point, I’m not sure where I really stand, though I think I’m tilting in favor of Heckmanesque early childhood programs as part of the liberaltarian package, which also would include wage subsidies and beefed-up unemployment benefits together with a radical deregulation of the labor market and the economy at large.

Viewing 11 Comments

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    I love this entry Will.
    I'm wondering what a "Heckmanesque" early childhood program intervention looks like, compared to, well, the others.
    I think I'm going to start referring to myself as a liberaltarian too (will cite you).
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    Australia has a long and sometimes sordid past of drastic childhood interventions. They had disturbingly limited success, and frequently were carried out with alarming brutality.

    There were two problems:

    1. Children failed to benefit from a supposedly enriched environment.

    2. The state provided a dreadful environment.

    On the one hand, this long and horrifying past provides ample evidence that the swiftly reproducing poor really are genetically inferior, on the other hand, it also provides ample evidence that government bureaucrats are even worse for children than incompetent and neglectful parents.
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    The extreme anti-nurture side (perhaps represented by Judith Harris) also argues against conservatives (who do so love the family) and libertarians that blame government intervention for poor development. I have been shifting towards that from my previous anti-government conservative libertarianism.
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    TGGP,

    But Harris said that it was peer groups that influenced children more than parents. Peer groups are a manifestation of policy too, thus leading to yet another conservative libertarian oriented criticism.
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    Social Justice and Social Control are linked at the hip. If anything, a failure of pure "social justice" will entice "social control" on behalf conservative policy wonks. A good reason for leftists to eschew the state and organize grassroots and voluntary associations. That way, they can have their cake (concern for the reproduction of poverty) and eat it (concern for social control) too.
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    The point about elitism (really paternalism) is an important one.

    One way to try to avoid being too paternalist about interventions would be to ask poor people what they want out of life. My guess is, most crappy parents are inept, but not malevolent. They have some vision for the good life, they just don't know how to get there. If you take care to make interventions that align with and support their broad vision, you can alleviate poverty without undercutting or denigrating the judgement of the parents.

    These approaches mirror recent thinking in international development. See, e.g. William Easterly's "White Man's Burden." In a sense he addresses just the same problem: how do you help people without presuming what's best for them?

    The answer in both cases is to see that the goals of efficacy (bringing people out of poverty) and self-determination (don't do everything for the person) are really the same goal. Self-determination has to be woven into the DNA of whatever intervention is being proposed.

    I think the early childhood interventions mentioned in the post probably pass this test. A simple question is: if you asked parents whether they would accept this "boost" for their child, would they say yes? My guess is most parents would say yes.
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    The Heckman reference is Science 30 June 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1900 - 1902. His point is that the marginal benefit of social investment in human capital is very high in utero and falls quickly and consistently thereafter. You get a dollar's return for a dollar spent sometime in early childhood. He isn't arguing against spending money on adolescents or high schools. His point is that we are missing huge opportunities for improving human capital by not investing more in preventing prematurity, screening for developmental delays, and the like.
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    There would seem to be some tension between early childhood intervention and libertarian (and radical leftist) fear of life planning and regimentation for the most vulnerable.

    Setting benchmarks for the level of, say, reading comprehension and math proficiency for all of the nation's children seems rather No Child Left Behind-ish to me, and totally at odds with a citizenry in control of its own life.

    Brink Lindsey has discussed the way that upper middle class childrens' lives are meticulously planned for them from their earliest years on through to young adulthood. For poor parents, it's more "do your own thing". I fear that liberaltarianism might be another Jane Addams like scheme to reign in the relatively freewheeling lower classes and set them on the track to respectability.
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    What's wrong with poverty again? Why do we have to work so hard to get rid of it? Not saving money is one way that people prefer to avoid thinking about the future, and death. That's real diversity. And if you really want to reduce poverty, stop importing more poor people. That's guaranteed to work, instead of jerry-rigged fantasy schemes.
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    bjk,

    do you personally prefer a reduction in relative or absolute poverty?
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    Poverty is remarkably stubborn, and one reason is that the poor are very stubborn. That's why all of the schemes have failed so far. The poor have gotten in the way. Wilkinson favors the sociological theories of poverty, but what if the biggest factor turned out to be genetic? Would genetic solutions be appropriate? Once poverty turns into a problem--and this is a relatively recent phenomena--it's arbitrary to put a limit on the solutions. I'd suggest rethinking the idea that it's a problem.

    This also suggests the problem with liberaltarianism. Libertarianism is a genuine political doctrine, and freedom is a political concept. Liberaltarianism, I submit, is an engineer's conception of politics, with no guiding political concept. Is poverty a problem? The liberaltarian will engineer a solution, so much the worse for freedom or justice or whatever political concept happens to get in the way.

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