Welfare Rates and Stereotypes of Immigrants in Denmark
Here is the introduction to an interesting paper. It covers some similar to ground to some of my recent and upcoming posts but uses data on immigrant groups to Denmark:
Stereotypes, that is, people’s beliefs about groups1, are often assumed to be exaggerated and inaccurate (Jussim, 2012). However, whether this is so is rarely examined. The existing body of research reveals that stereotypes are usually fairly accurate and rarely ex- aggerate real differences (Jussim, 2012; Jussim et al., 2015). Demographic stereotypes tend to be among the more accurate. As far as we know, only one prior (pi- lot) study has examined stereotype accuracy in Den- mark (Kirkegaard & Bjerrekær, 2016a). The study was small (N = 48 after quality control), had a strongly unrepresentative sample but was preregistered. It found that stereotypes were fairly accurate (median correlational accuracy score = .51), but the results are hard to generalize to the overall population. The present study is a replication and expansion of the prior study using a large, nationally representative sample.
Please forgive any odd formatting. Through the miracle of the modern US service economy I am without internet except for my phone and will remain so at least through the weekend. It also means that I only went through the paper on my phone. Still, I am not seeing anything obviously wrong with the paper. I like that they made their data available, were crystal clear on methodology, and pre-registered what they were going to be doing before they did it. My only quibble is that their “large” sample only contained 484 observations once they cleaned up the data. There is wrong with 484 observations. I often work with much less, but I wouldn’t call that a large sample.
Here is the abstract, which I think is more clear after you read the introduction reproduced above.
A nationally representative Danish sample was asked to estimate the percentage of persons aged 30-39 living in Denmark receiving social benefits for 70 countries of origin (N = 766). After extensive quality control procedures, a sample of 484 persons were available for analysis. Stereotypes were scored by accuracy by comparing the estimates values to values obtained from an official source. Individual stereotypes were found to be fairly accurate (median/mean correlation with criterion values = .48/.43), while the aggregate stereotype was found to be very accurate (r = .70). Both individual and aggregate-level stereotypes tended to underestimate the percentages of persons receiving social benefits and underestimate real group differences. In bivariate analysis, stereotype correlational accuracy was found to be predicted by a variety of predictors at above chance levels, including conservatism (r = .13), nationalism (r = .11), some immigration critical beliefs/preferences, agreement with a few political parties, educational attainment (r = .20), being male (d = .19) and cognitive ability (r = .22). Agreement with most political parties, experience with ghettos, age, and policy positions on immigrant questions had little or no predictive validity. In multivariate predictive analysis using LASSO regression, correlational accuracy was found to be predicted only by cognitive ability and educational attainment with even moderate level of reliability. In general, stereotype accuracy was not easy to predict, even using 24 predictors (k-fold cross-validated R2 = 4%). We examined whether stereotype accuracy was related to the proportion of Muslims in the groups. Stereotypes were found to be less accurate for the groups with higher proportions of Muslims in that participants underestimated the percentages of persons receiving social benefits (mean estimation error for Muslim groups relative to overall elevation error = -8.09 %points). The study was preregistered with most analyses being specified before data collection began.
I imagine they separated Muslim groups because those are relatively recent and numerous in a country like Denmark, and despite laws to the contrary, often stereotyped. But not necessarily discriminated against:
It can be seen that even the most extreme nationalists in this sample are still not biased against Muslim groups in their ratings because the regression line does not cross 0.
There are a few figures in the article (I will let you look them up) that could have come from my recent posts, even though it looks at welfare by national origin in Denmark and I have been looking at income levels by national origin in the US. Looking at a graph, It seems that countries whose emigrants perform well in the US perform well in Denmark, and those that do poorly in one country do poorly in the other. At a glance the big difference seems to be the lack of Central American immigrants in Denmark in large enough numbers to show up in their graph.
In their conclusion, they find that on aggregate, Danish stereotypes vis a vis how different groups of immigrants to Denmark tend to be dependent on welfare tend to be pretty accurate.
So what does this article plus my posts imply about the economy? The degree to which countries produce emigrants who are culturally well adapted to contribute to the economy can vary dramatically. Immigrants can add to or subtract from productivity. One of the arguments for increased immigration is that the dwindling birth rate in many Western countries means those countries will require an influx of immigrants to keep their economies humming. But the data implies that this only works if immigration is done selectively. Otherwise, immigration can exacerbate issues in the economy.
“is done selectively”
Yeah, who’d thunk it?
“Those are his chief privileges. For in regard to personal rights and personal liberty the alien enjoys the same amount of protection as the citizen, and frequently even more. Anyhow that is how it happens in our present German Republic.
I realize fully that nobody likes to hear these things. But it would be difficult to find anything more illogical or more insane than our contemporary laws in regard to State citizenship.
At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in the U.S.A. that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People’s State.”
http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv2ch03.html
EMichael,
Other things you should avoid because Hitler are here.
Muslim immigrants to the U.S. do more poorly than, say, Russian immigrants? Or German immigrants? Or Scottish immigrants? Or Israeli immigrants? More Muslim immigrants here are on welfare than those other immigrants?
And the statistics for this are … where, exactly?
I’ve posted many comments to this guy’s various posts now pointing out that Dearborn, MI has the highest number of Middle Eastern immigrants in the country, most of them Muslim, and that southeastern Michigan is the census-specific region that has the highest number of them.
And that most of them ain’t on welfare. A high percentage of them are small-business owners or work in small businesses owned by relatives or others from their communities.
Yet, again and again and again, this man, without supporting evidence (since it very likely doesn’t exist; if it did he would be producing it, right?), he repeats this innuendo and claims it’s fact.
As I said in a comment this morning in the comments thread to one of my posts from yesterday, I’ll no longer be blogging here. My reasons aren’t related to this sick, perpetual series of posts–which this writer indicates yet again will go on and on and on. But this post of his would have been reason to leave, in a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back sense.
God.
holy shit
Might someone want to post here about, say, THIS?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opinion/jeff-sessions-other-civil-rights-problem.html
Y’know; tie it into welfare rates among, say, African-Americans, since that’s been a major theme of this writer’s lovely series, along with immigrants?
Just suggustin’.
So, Muslim immigrants apparently understate the rate of benefit consumption by their group. Do non-immigrants understate the rate of benefit consumption by non-immigrants?
Seems this paper has fewer interesting things potentially to say about immigrants and more interesting things to say about society’s views on poverty and welfare in general.
J Goodwin – the poll respondents were a representative sample of Danes, not the immigrants themselves.
That is cute! Welcome to Angry Bear. Everyone goes through moderation. I assume you were approved by someone I met recently in California.
Immigrants are part of the sample, and were stratified for analysis.
J.Goodwin, Kimel of course has no idea whether non-immigrants understate the rate of benefit consumption by non-immigrants. His main tactic throughout this silly series has been sleight-of-hand. You’re not supposed to notice things like that, even though things like–presumptions he states as conclusions, that have no evidentiary support–are the continuing essence of what this guy writes.
Bev throws rocks at Kimel. She says he is guilty of sleight of hand. He draws conclusions with no evidence.
Sorry Bev, You have no right to criticize. You have had hundreds or articles built on lies and thin air. Bev wrote this silliness: the whole thing was a fabrication:
I RETRACT MY RETRACTION:
A cabal of NYC FBI agents may well have PLANTED those emails on Weiner’s laptop–
J Goodwin,
The ex-GF and I discussed the paper last night and had the same interpretation. I am open to being corrected (I am too old to read technical work over the phone as well as I do on s larger monitor) but I don’t think the surveyed population over represented immigrants who I understand make up less than 10% of the Danish population.
Beverly,
The paper shows:
1. Different groups of immigrants (age 30-39) consume welfare at very different rates in Denmark. Not a tabula rasa type outcome.
2. Stereotypes held by the Danish public with regards to the amount of welfare consumed by different groups tend to be accurate. If certain stereotypes are accurate, what are the implications of ignoring them?
Now combine with the reference to my posts. Countries whose immigrants do well in the US as measured by income per capita tend to consume relatively little welfare in Denmark. Traits that tend to generate good outcomes in the US generate good outcomes in Denmark.
The Muslim issue was not one I focused on. The authors of the paper I quoted did. I would be happy to include such a variable in future studies given your interest. No doubt you have an idea what it would show if the stereotypes you hold are accurate. But If you can’t wait I would refer to you my posts on the top and bottom ten immigrant groups by income per capita. There is a bit of information there.
Jason Richwine in a 2009 Ph.D Dissertation at Harvard basically claimed:
” that “[n]o one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/jason-richwine-resigns-heritage-foundation_n_3254927.html
If this is the direction you are heading, I would back away from it really fast. Even the Heritage Foundation would not touch this one. Jason added:
“Superior performance on basic economic indicators is to be expected from later generations, who go to American schools, learn English, and become better acquainted with the culture,” he wrote. “Despite built-in advantages, too many Hispanic natives are not adhering to standards of behavior that separate middle and working class neighborhoods from the barrio.”
“There can be little dispute that post 1965-immigration has brought a larger and increasingly visible Hispanic underclass to the United States, yet the underlying reasons for its existence cannot be understood without considering IQ,” he wrote.
He argued that these individuals were more likely to accept government benefits. “When given the choice between a paycheck from a low-paying job and a welfare check, most intelligent people would realize that the welfare check offers them no potential for advancement. Low-IQ people do not internalize that fact nearly as well,” he wrote.
Krasting
speaking of which, how you doin’ with that “Bomshell!!”
I put up a link to a CBO report on SS and you have now asked me three times to call it a “bombshell”.
Why do you want me to do that? If you want to refer to the report that way please go ahead. I don’t see it as a bombshell as it is just a rehash of previously released info.
I did find it a bit odd (not a bombshell). This is a first time ever report like this. It came out days after the election. Was CBO sending a message? A cry for help sort of?
Possibly CBO did not want to introduce SS into the political process, so it waited until some of the election dust settled.
But let me put a question to Coberly, the math wizard. SSA has the Immediate and Permanent tax increase necessary to stabilize SS as 2.66%. CBO puts the I&P number at 4.68%
Coberly, can you please tell us what the dollar difference between CBO and SSA is for JUST 2017?? Get out the abacus and have a go at it.
Krasting
still suffering from Korsakoff.
i was referring to your comment re Hillary’s emails. you promised us a bomshell… “new emails, more incriminating.”
that never happened. i was hoping it would cause you to question your sources.
as far as CBO vs SSA prodictions. SSA has been pretty much on the mark for the ten plus years i have been watching. you were not so ready to embrace CBO projections when they were more optimistic than SSA. but when CBO got a new director and found new ways to fudge their guesses you suddenly changed your loyalty.
i don’t claim to be a math whiz. the math that shows SSA projections can be met by a dollar a week per year is pretty simple. without detailed info about the CBO projections there is no way to do the math, but at a rough guess i’d point out that the “immediate and permanent” is a red herring you can’t seem to understand. the gradual increase in the tax will always work. if conditions get really bad (more CBO-ish) the needed increase might be a little more… maybe a dollar and a half per week per year, or the dollar a week per year for a few more years. it will NOT be a noticeable burden on the workers whose wages are projected to increase over ten dollars per week during the same time.
and even if were a noticeable burden, Social Security is still the best way they have to guarantee a least a basic retirement at a reasonable age. paying for that is not a “burden” it is a blessing.
here is a very rough way to look at it: an increase of 2.66% “immediate and permanent” will pay for SS for 75 years. That’s an increase of 1.33% for the worker and 1.33% for the employer (in if you insist that the employers share is “really” the workers money, then you have to add that money to the employees wages… in other words its a wash. that 1.33% of a 50k wage (current average) is about thirteen dollars per week. Not unnoticeable, but not a burden either… especially if you can remember you get the money back with interest, and an insurance boost if you need it) when you will need it a lot more than you do today. Moreover, you don’t have to start “immediately” to pay this much, you can start by paying a dollar extra per week this year, and increase it another dollar next year, and so on…. you would never feel this… as said above, your wages should go up ten dollars per week per year in real dollars.
So what does the CBO projection mean: Take that 4.68%, that’s 2.34% each, or about 23 dollars per week, but again, this can be reached gradually, a dollar a week, or maybe two dollars per week, per year. I guarantee you won’t notice it after you get used to paying it. i double guarantee you won’t notice the two dollars per week per year increases if that’s what comes to pass. I triple guarantee you will notice it if you let the politicians “fix” Social Security by raising the retirement age, cutting benefits, means testing, or privatizing it. Even if you are one of the lucky ones, you won’t get rich living in a country where old people are starving in the streets, or living on welfare… which, of course, the same politicians will cut until it is meaningless as retirement security.
Run,
The ex-GF had a few comments way back when. 2007? 2008? But she fell out of the system apparently. She doesn’t pay that much attention to most economic issues but she usually asks me what I am writing about and sometimes it leads to a conversation. This time she read the underlying article.
Here’s a picture of her from that era: http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2007/03/random-cat-blogging.html
The cat in the pic, McGinty, is still with us but in failing health. Lung cancer, kidneys, difficulty walking, general frailty, etc. McGinty has also turned out to be a he (and older than expected) despite what the first vet I took him to said. And the second vet. The third had doubts. Only recently were we told definitively. Anyway, a very contemporary issue.
Albert Vinicio Báez was a prominent Mexican-American physicist, and the father of singers Joan Baez and Mimi Fariña. He was born in Puebla, Mexico, and his ..
well, i guess we don’t need no steenking mexican physicists or their daughters in this country.
i have had some experience with “scholars” like Richwine. despite their high i.q.’s they are lacking something…. intellectual honest perhaps…. that makes them stupid.
i’d rather have a bracero for a neighbor.
the way things are going we are going to need more braceros in this country so us high i.q. types will be able to eat without getting our hands dirty… except metaphorically of course.
i am sorry that Kimel has come to this.
Luis Fernández Álvarez (1 April 1853 – 24 May 1937) was a Spanish American physician and researcher who practiced in California and Hawaii. Fernández …
father of luia Alvarez a physicist who got a Nobel prize for something. probably not on the list where Kimel couldn’t find any non germanic winners.
but hey, let’s hear it for stereotypes. after all we wouldn’t want to have to judge people as individuals when we can judge them by the color of their last name.
i’m afraid mike won’t be winning any Nobel prizes for his research.
I wonder if there is any other difference between Muslim immigrants to Denmark and German immigrants to Denmark.
I wonder if the people who guessed right about the “welfare” received by immigrants read the local papers. there are contributors to Angry Bear who know a lot more than i do about the statistics of poverty… people with an adverse ideological interest.
i wonder if the stereotypes are more or less accurate… you would expect them to be. but does that mean we should treat people as if they were the “stereotypical” representative of their race?
I can see Mike standing there by the Statue of Liberty saying, “no we don’t want people like you in this country because they hurt the gdp.
So did the irish and poles and the italians… when they came here. because no one would pay them a decent wage.
Mike no longer “sounds” racist. What he is doing is racist by definition.
Maybe some day i’ll write a paper on why good people turn racist. I could use Mike as a stereotypical example. But I’d have to fudge it up with really worthless “statistics.”
oh, and the worst thing about this is that we are supposed to sell our souls for a few imaginary points in “growth” of GDP.
which, of course, as we all know, comes only from people who are good at math and physics and genetically related to Das Volk.
Very loosely stated, that’s the preamble to the Constitution of the US. We are supposed to care about the Welfare of the people in the US and take into account how something would affect that Welfare when making laws. Or we can have the preamble changed. No big deal.
Alternatively, we can ignore data that people believe because it conforms with their daily observations and make discussion of things people believe true illegal. It has been three decades since I read the Gulag Archipelago. Remind me how it turned out again.
Alternatively we can try to figure out what to do about it. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a barely literate fan of FGM and stoning gay people won’t function well in the US or Denmark whether they hail from Germany or Somalia. And there are organizations like Pew that take polls in countries around the world to measure factors like literacy and attitudes toward women and gay people. Not surprisingly, in general countries with attitudes similar to those in the US and Denmark produce more immigrants who do well in the US and Denmark. Making it illegal to ask questions or notice something that is obvious enough that stereotypes around it conform closely to reality is not going to fix the issue.
So it would pay to be more careful about admitting immigrants from countries with attitudes different from ours than from countries with similar attitudes. It isn’t just growth rates. We see occasional honor killings and cases of FGM in the US now. I presume you agree that isn’t a good thing. That seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t see the problem with asking extra questions (how are you going to support yourself and your family of eight when you cannot read? Are you planning to have your girls undergo a cliteroctomy when they reach puberty? What is your attitude toward various religious groups that are popular in the US?) of a person with attitudes that are orthogonal to our own than you would if the person is a fifth generation Canadian. And if it turns out that some Canadians harbor a stone the gay people attitude, question them more carefully too.
We could of course take another approach and declare that the purpose of immigration is charity. You might be happy with that. It does eliminate growth as a reason for immigration. But if that is your goal, state it as such. And be clear about the expected outcomes.
Hitler and the US Constitution.
Once again, Holy Shit.
btw,
Both HS’s are directed at Mike.
Ah. There it is, right there in the Preamble to the Constitution itself!
So Mr. Kimel turns out to be the ultimate constitutional originalist. Except that even that late, great constitutional originalist Antonin Scalia would dispute that the Constitution’s Preamble means that caring about the Welfare of the people in the US means barring everyone who isn’t Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch or French (they already were here back then) from this country, or others of similar genetic makeup (Scandinavians, for example).
After all, the good, late justice himself would not have been in this country, had immigration officials back in the day UNDERSTOOD THAT THIS IS WHAT THE PREAMBLE MEANS, them not wanting to act unconstitutionally, and all.
It’s too bad for Native Americans that they didn’t think to challenge the immigration laws as unconstitutional, all the way back when there was still room for Anglos and Germans as well as for them.
And as for the low IQ of Hispanics, I’m wondering whether Kimel is aware of the level of sophistication of Mexican society back before, say, 1776.
And at least as important, I’m wondering why he thinks the good white folk in rural Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee, for example, and in much of the small-town and small-city Rust Belt and Midwest, have higher IQs than Hispanics—given the current state of so many of their lives, and their current rate of use of the social safety net. Few of the folks in Kentucky who voted straight-ticket Republican earlier this month and who now reportedly are panicking that they might lose their Medicaid benefits—and who still apparently don’t know that they probably also will lose their food stamps—are, say, Hispanic.
I’m guessing based on his surname that Dan Crawford is of Anglo genetic stock, so he’d be here even if a good percentage of the rest of this country’s current population would not be had the likes of Kimel had their say. Which I assume is why he’s allowing his blog, which he carefully curated for well more than a decade, to be indiscriminately used to push this vile nonsense even though he himself would not be caught dead writing or supporting this stuff.
And even though at this moment in this country, it’s feeding a truly dangerous beast.
And even though while Kimel claims that some of the commenters here are pushing to make writings of this sort—how bizarre is this guy going to get here?—Dan himself surely recognizes that no comment here has suggested any such thing and that this weird, incessant, sleight-of-hand method of making claims that are outright false—not just about what his statistics show but also about what he’s just said, and now about what commenters have said.
Where exactly in this thread or in threads to his other posts did someone say that writing this nonsense is or should be illegal?
Kimel is—now openly—a white nationalist. And maybe those who follow this blog but who aren’t should just boycott this blog as they would blogs whose sole purpose is white nationalism.
Not sure how long this comment will remain here. I’m guessing, not long, unless it’s responded to with some rant.
“Kimel is—now openly—a white nationalist. And maybe those who follow this blog but who aren’t should just boycott this blog as they would blogs whose sole purpose is white nationalism.”
I am sorry to read this kind of comment Bev, but you have gone off the rails. Your own rants are becoming tiresome. There are clear reasons to disagree, but white nationalism is not one of them. I am afraid a cooling off period is needed…AB will just have to boycott you for now.
Bev,
Might not go that far, but it is getting pretty bad when someone brings up the Preamble and somehow ignores that “establish justice” thing.
Course, the FFs were far from perfect, but at least we have made a lot of progress towards the goal of justice.
Until now of course.
There is no one in the country who can possibly believe that justice, of all shapes and sizes, will decrease the next several years.
Obama believes his Admin’s achievements will be saved. There is not a shot. I’m worried about LBJ’s achievements being saved. I’m worried about FDR’s achievements being saved.
And most of all I worry about there not being another Martin Luther King to restart a peaceful dialogue to repair this destruction. A destruction that is foreshadowed by these intolerable posts by Kimel.
Uh-oh, Kimel. Better get a more widely read forum than AB for educating the masses about the meaning of the Welfare clause in the Constitution’s Preamble. Seems a substantial majority of the public isn’t aware of it:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-campaign-promises-231774
kimel
“general welfare” does not mean a few points in GDP growth at the cost of say, the environment, worker safety, retirement insurance, health insurance, and recognizing that there are other talents necessary even to gdp than being related distantly to someone who got a nobel prize.
it is your bad logic that informs your bad statistics.
Not sure what you mean by, you might not go that far, EMichael. But the Preamble stuff is the least dangerous part of what this guy is trying to sell, because it’s so obviously nonsense. The REALLY dangerous stuff he spews is the constant conflating of this or that statistic and relevance to his stated conclusion.
Often, as with this post, he adopts a conclusion of someone he’s quoting, based on some statistic the other person is using that does not actually indicate anything that suggests the conclusion they claim. There are two constants in his posts: the sleights of hand of that sort, and the denials that he said what he said either in the post or a comment in the post’s thread, or in another of posts or comments to one of them—and his claim that we all just misunderstood what he as saying, we’re putting words in his mouth, and what he actually said was … whatever.
And, yes, a blog that has this stuff on it and keeps posting post after post claiming statistics to support a white supremacy, and now the Preamble of the Constitution to support white nationalism, damn well is a white supremacist and white nationalist blog. No matter what else is posted on the blog.
You end your comment with: A destruction that is foreshadowed by these intolerable posts by Kimel. A blog that lends itself to the aid of this is itself intolerable.
About a week ago, Krugman in a Twitter post mentioned “The Sorrow and the Pity.” There’s a reason why he did. Dan Crawford should check out what Krugman meant, if he’s unfamiliar with “The Sorrow and the Pity”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorrow_and_the_Pity
This isn’t trivial stuff.