Freak - Ch. 5-6 Questions 20b5x

AP Economics Freakonomics - Chapter Five This chapter helps to answer the age-old question; “What makes a perfect parent?” Once you have read and carefully studied this chapter you should be able to complete the following tasks which, taken together, answer this and related questions. 1. Why are parents more susceptible to “fear-mongering” than other people? They are so susceptible because many have never raised a child before and are very worried about doing something wrong that will result in later faults in their offspring. Parents see the stakes to make the right decisions when raising kids as very high. 2. What market forces give rise to parenting books that appeal to a parent’s fears and inadequacies rather than books which present an objective and evenhanded articulation of the state-of-the science of good parenting? The fact that only bold and radical parenting books will receive widespread media attention leads authors to advocate more extreme measures instead of using an objective view. 3. How does the information in this chapter regarding the contradictory and confusing assemblage of information from parenting experts the major theme of this book (Hint: incentives matter)? It shows that because there is an incentive for experts to advocate extreme parenting techniques these experts do exactly that and create an entire market that is very polarized. 4. When looking at statistical data over a period of time, what does “correlation” mean? How is it different from “causation?” Correlation means that when one variable increases, the other increases (or vice versa). This is different from causation because correlation only means that two variables are somehow related. Causation proves that a change in one variable results in a direct change in the other. 5. What tool does an economist use to make sense of data which include many variables? In general , how does regression analysis sort out the data? An economist uses regression analysis to hold other variables constant in a large data set while allowing two to be manipulated. This allows the economist to study the effect of these two variables on each other. 6. Describe, in general , the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS)? Who conducted it, who was the target of the study, and what was the purpose of the study? This study was a project conducted by the US Department of Education to measure the academic progress of students in grade school across the nation. With such a large set of data, economists could work out many different relationships between variables, oftentimes reaching surprising conclusions. 7. According to the data in this chapter, what are the main differences between a school which overwhelmingly has black students versus a school which overwhelmingly has white students? The differences include an increase in gang problems, nonstudents loitering in front of the school, and lack of PTA funding in schools that have overwhelmingly black students.

8. According to the data developed from the ECLS, what is more important regarding a child’s success on standardized tests: what a parent does for a child or what a parent is? In your opinion, what might be an explanation for such a strange conclusion? What a parent is matters more because many of these things will be ed on genetically to the child and are not the result of specific actions of the parent. 9. According to the data developed from the ECLS, having lots of books in the home is correlated with higher scores on a child’s tests, reading to the child nearly every day is not. If a parent were only interested in having his or her child achieve higher scores on standardize tests, what would you imagine his or her benefit/cost considerations to be when it came to the purchase of books and this use of his or her time? I think this question would center on the fact that the parents are considering buying books for the child in the first place. Since a parent who would shell out the money to educate his child is likely to be more educated than one who wouldn’t, the mere fact that he is thinking about buying these books means that the child will score higher. With this said, this parent should probably think about how many books he wants to buy and how much time he can commit to reading them. However, since reading to a child, according to the controlled data, does not have any significant effect on test scores, the parent does not need to necessarily invest his time to read these books. 10. According to the data developed from the ECLS, a low birth weight is correlated with lower test scores on standardized tests, but the attendance by a child in the Head Start program is not. If you were a government official with limited financial resources, how would this inform your decisions regarding the allocation of government funds? This would cause me lean towards using the funds to help educate others about the factors which cause low birth weight children and hopefully prevent it from happening as often in the future. Since the money spent on this crusade will actually have a significant effect on test scores, this would be the worthy cause in this case. AP Economics Freakonomics - Chapter Six This chapter raises a rather intriguing question, “What’s in a name?” Once you have read and carefully studied this chapter you should be able to complete the following tasks which, taken together, answer this and related questions. 1. What do the experiences of Winner Lane, Loser Lane, and Temptress tell us about the likely relationship between a child’s name and his/her prospects for success in life? Are these examples sufficient for us to draw any definitive conclusions? Why or why not? These examples show that a name is not a guarantee of any future prospects in life, and that they should not be relied on to predict any problems or successes. These examples are not sufficient because “Winner” and “Loser” both did the opposite of their names while Temptress lived out her name. 2. Explain what Roland G. Fryer was trying to get at when he decided to explore the following question: is distinctive black culture a cause of the economic disparity between blacks and whites or merely a reflection of it?

The question he’s trying to answer basically comes down to a “chicken and the egg” scenario. He wants to know whether blacks have developed their own culture in the US as a result of economic inequality or whether this inequality caused this unique culture to form in the first place. 3. Why is the California birth certificate data set so valuable from the economist’s perspective? In particular, what type of data does it include that would be of interest to economists? Why are the variables you listed so useful/valuable? It is so valuable because it shows how differently black and white parents name their children. It includes data such as name, gender, race, birthweight, parental marital status, zip code, means of paying hospital bill, and parental level of education. These are so useful because they allow economists to isolate trends in the data and compare racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to naming patterns. 4. What do the California names data tell us about the similarity between the names black parents and white parents gave their children up until the early 1970s and in the period of time since then? The data show that up until the 70s, black and white names were generally pretty similar but a wide gap began after this period. 5. Summarize the degree of uniqueness of names given to black girls and black boys revealed in the California names data. What do the authors cite as the most likely cause of this phenomenon? The data show that black names are very unique compared to those given to white babies. The authors cite the Black Power movement and a desire of parents to “act black” and give their child a distinctly black name so that they seem in accord with the surrounding community. 6. Summarize the characteristics of a black parent who is most likely to give his/her child a distinctively black name. Such a parent is likely an “unmarried, low-income, undereducated teen mother from a black neighborhood who has a distinctly black name herself.” 7. Explain how an “audit study” is used to determine whether having a very “white” name or a very “black” name matters. These studies send identical resumes to employers and assign one a black name and the other a white name. It has been shown that the “white resumes” bring in more interviews than black ones even though the credentials are the same. 8. Are the results of audit studies regarding the effects of a person’s name on that person’s prospects for success reliable? If not, why not? No, they aren’t at all reliable because they can’t measure the actual true life outcomes of white vs. black sounding names (and people), they only show whether or not an interview is given. 9. According to the analysis of the California names data, does a person with a distinctively black name have, on average, a worse life outcome than a person with a distinctively white name? If so, is it the fault of the name? If not, explain what the data are telling us. Yes, but this is not the fault of their names. The fact that they have a worse life outcome mainly just stems from the fact that people with distinctly black names are more likely to be born into lower socioeconomic status and therefore will not be as successful.

10. Is there a discernible pattern in how certain names move through the population over time? If so, describe it. Yes, the high-end names generally move down the line to become low-end names in a cycle. 11. Is a low-income parent more likely to choose the name of a celebrity or the child of an upper-income family for his/her own child. Why? They are more likely to copy the name of an upper-income family because celebrity names don’t have that much of an effect on popular names and low class families look towards the wealth of others as a clue that by giving their children such a name, they can increase their chances of success. 12. According to the California names data, what are many parents trying to signal when they choose a particular name for their child? They try to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be.