Jonathan T. Rothwell

My latest research on the fundamental sources of wellbeing is out in Nature Communications Psychology. Research Q1: How much does parent-child relationship quality--experienced during childhood--contribute to long-term flourishing/wellbeing and mental health?

I've long been a fan of that paper & discussed their work in my book in inequality (read by almost no one: press.princeton.edu/books/hardcove…). The main problem with this line reasoning--and why it is so unsatisfying in identifying causes--is that it is corporate-centric. We know from other work (eg Smith, Zidar, Zwick) that most of the action in inequality has come from non-C-corporations, S-corps, LLCs, etc. The corporate share of income has plummeted. Why? Because non-corps are where doctors, lawyers, dentists work--as well as other industry-occupation combinations that have seen rising "productivity" that is more correctly interpreted as rents. The moral of the story is inequality would be much less if markets were less regulated--and the most over-regulated markets are the local state-controlled ones, where state lobbying is powerful and dominant in its protection of incumbants.

Song, Price, Guvenen, Bloom, von Wachter: "Firming Up Inequality" (2019) jstor.org/stable/2686493…

The standard narrative is that the increase in inequality is due to fat cat CEOs. The thing is, that just doesn't explain the rise in inequality, which has happened mainly between firms rather than within firms. While executive pay increased, it's only part of the story. 1/

Melissa has been doing excellent research on fertility for many years and this article is a terrific summary of the strengths and limitations of the economic approach to fertility decisions. It's clear that economists must engage with "culture" to make progress on the topic.

U.S. adolescents are much less likely to doing paid work in recent years than in the 1970s-1990s, even during the summer.

@cremieuxrecueil Interesting. I read Bratsberg and Rogeberg's paper as providing evidence that Flynn effects are real & caused by within-family environmental factors. Do you agree with either of those claims? Having read many of your posts on this topic, I would predict that you'd disagree.

@jtrothwell Actually, if you read my post, you'll notice that you're wrong and that I never mentioned the word "genetic" and it's not relevant here anyway.

The Flynn Effect in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth Children sample... Doesn't persist within families. It's entirely the result of smarter families having kids later, so the kids born later tend to be smarter.

@cremieuxrecueil Your claim was not limited to the sample but was about the Flynn effect generally being genetic. The paper says it was not genetic; hence it contradicts the claim.

@jtrothwell No, it doesn't. That's a paper based on an entirely different sample.

Reminder: r = T/sqrt(T^2 + df), where df= n - parameters - 1. Here, the millions of observations almost guarantees "significant" effects, but they are super trivial. Many social sci papers are published with effect sizes that are trivial. Always check the effect sizes!

I'm seeing a lot of discussion of this study, so I checked the effect size. It is r = 0.001. That's very small. So small that it would be accurate to say that income has no meaningful effect on fertility at all.

I like the thread. On the study, the effect size of female income (& male income) is r=0.001. That means approximately no variation in child-bearing was explained by male or female income. This is calculated from Table 2. r = t/sqrt(T^2 + df), where df=sample size - parameters - 1.

The right question: What actually makes for a good life? Not a productive life. Not an optimized life. A good one. The data on that exists too.

MONEY & MOTHERHOOD A new study showed: Money causes men to have more kids. Money causes women to have fewer. Here’s how this insight can change our approach to family and solve the global fertility crisis: 🧵

@conncarroll @JaredOliphint Oh, I don't understand the reasons for that policy, at least for ages 7+. Despite the restrictions I mentioned, I view them as a great chance to build camaraderie and encourage creative child-driven play.

@jtrothwell @JaredOliphint A lot of parents have a strict no sleep overs ever rule these days. At least in my kids friend groups.

Really helpful to complement this with @jtrothwell's excellent guest post "The Parenting Trap" for @JonHaidt here: afterbabel.com/p/the-parentin…

I'm not sure exactly what is meant by restict in Lyman's article, but my sense is that many 3-12 year olds would have sleepovers every night if they were allowed. Case-by-case decision, but for me, I need evidence of maturity (so they will not keep each other awake all night or cry for parent in middle of night), restrict to weekends only, & once/week max. I suspect restrictions, in this sense, have been practiczed for as long as there have been sleepovers.

@JaredOliphint @jtrothwell @JonHaidt When did "restricting sleepovers" become a thing?

They don't parent like they used to. Permitting free reign on screen time is one symptom. One of the central arguments of my forthcoming book on parenting and youth mental health is summarized here. Many thanks to the After Babel team. The Parenting Trap open.substack.com/pub/jonathanha…

@BradWilcoxIFS Great report from @lymanstoneky. Congratulations on the new survey, very interesting and important findings!

Lyman arrives, bearing bad news for those who argue parenting (in this culture) can be easy. More authoritative parents have better relationships w/ their teens today. But they also feel like it's hard to be authoritative in this culture. Dovetails w/@jtrothwell @BrookingsInst.

@JaredOliphint Thank you, Jared.

@Christopheryabs @SketchesbyBoze Exactly. Epictetus taught to be focus only on what you can control. Social media gives control to everyone else. He and other Stoics taught us to be indifferent to outcomes. Social media trains us to care only for outcomes, such as engagement, likes, number of followers.

@SketchesbyBoze Social media trains people to think contrary to ancient wisdom

This is utterly terrifying. A growing number of kids can’t write a sentence, can’t name the state in which they live, don’t know their own names. They’re unable to hold a pencil or turn a page. We’re only beginning to reckon with the damage screens have wrought on children.

The study can be found here: "Interracial cooperation in the United States" brookings.edu/articles/inter… The data file is publicly available.

My general interpretation is that race plays a small role in the lived experience of most Americans. The importance of race, however, is consistently exaggerated in the media, and in the rhetoric of political leaders.

Yesterday, I published a report with Brookings on interracial cooperation in the United States. It summarizes a novel and expensive survey that we at Gallup conducted for the Brookings Center for Community Uplift.