mexican societal values

i thought i’d dip into the world values survey again to see what mexicans think/feel about certain behavioral norms/illegal activities in society as compared to americans (both white and black).

we’ve seen before that mexicans of all colors are less civic-minded than white americans, and that mexicans are more extended-family oriented than white americans (see also here). but what do mexicans think about the breaking of certain laws in society? how justifiable do they feel certain actions might be?

i looked at the world values survey 2005 and 2006 for the u.s. and mexico (you can read all about the two surveys in the technical reports here — they appear to be sound surveys to me). what i looked at were four of the “justifiable” questions:

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between [on a scale from 1 to 10, never to always]:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled.
- Avoiding a fare on public transport.
- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance.
- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties.

here are the results of those who answered “Never justifiable” by sub-population for each of the questions. moreno oscuro=dark mestizo, moreno claro=light mestizo. i left out the indigenous group in mexico because the sample size was too small. the sample sizes are n=ca. 130-830.

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

so only ca. 30-40% of mexicans (depending on their skin color) think that claiming gov’t benefits to which one is not entitled is never justifiable. otoh, nearly 70% of white americans think such a behavior is never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

again, a ten to twenty point difference between the various mexican sub-groups and white americans.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

the ranges are closer wrt cheating on taxes, but still, more white americans feel it’s never justifiable than these three various groups of mexicans.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

again, at least a ten, if not twenty, point spread between when it comes to thinking bribe taking can be justifiable.

it seems, then, that most mexicans — from white mexicans to dark-skinned mestizos (don’t know about the purely indigenous groups) — more ofen than white americans, feel that various types of cheating in society can be justified to some degree or another.

previously: civicness in mexico and familism in the u.s. of a. and anglo-american vs. mexican family values and hispanic family values

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i forgot

i meant to post this in yesterday’s linkfest, and i just plumb forgot. from a new blogger — davani:

“The Anglosphere’s Values Incompatible with Old-World Ones

“HBD bloggers such as Peter Frost and Steve Sailer lament the rise of a ‘brave new world’ in the West in which multiculturalism, diversity, and immigration increasingly take hold. But let’s ask where these cultural notions come from. They come from the very same Anglo-Saxon genes which these authors probably share themselves. In effect, protesting against New-World values (made possible by the Anglosphere and its culture) may be equivalent to protesting against their own DNA….”

he’s got a point (i think).

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familism in the u.s. – whites by region

jayman says/asks:

“Theoretically, Red Staters are more able to depend on extended family. But here’s a question on the matter: is that true *today*? Are Whites in the South and West *today* more kin-centric? My (somewhat limited) experience in those parts of the country seems to indicate that they’re just about as individualistic as Blue Staters. I understand that kin-groups are still a major feature in Appalachia, but how about the rest of red America?”

**ALERT, ALERT!: READER REQUEST!** (^_^)

ok. so i looked at the “behavioral familism” related questions in the 2002 gss to see how whites in the different regions of the u.s. responded to the following questions:

- “How often do you contact your uncles/aunts?”
- “How often do you contact your nieces/nephews?”
- “How often do you contact your cousin(s)?”

the possible answers were:

- “More than twice in last 4 weeks.”
- “Once or twice in last 4 weeks.”
- “Not at all in last 4 weeks.”
- “I have no living relative of this type.”

as before, i collapsed the first two possible answers together to make a sorta “yes” repsonse (“yes, i’ve contacted that person in the last 4 weeks”).

here’s what i found (sorry, you might need your glasses to read these — wordpress has fixed it so that you can’t see a LARGER image in a new tab/window anymore. grrrrrr!):

the patterns i see are:

- east south central (alabama, kentucky, mississippi and tennessee), a consistently red state area, comes in twice with the highest ranking — and is above the national average on those two questions.
- new england, a consistently blue state area, comes in once with the highest ranking — and, in fact, is above the national average on all three questions. so no one can accuse the new englanders of not being oriented towards the extended family!

the above average scorers on the three questions were (map of regions here):

new england – above average 3 times
east south central – 2 times
east north central (wi, il, mi, in, oh) – 2 times
west south central (tx, ok, ar, la) – 2 times
west north central (nd, sd, ne, ks, mn, ia, mo) – 2 times
south atlantic (de, md, dc, va, wv, nc, sc, ga, fl) – once

- the pacific states (ak, wa, or, ca, hi), a mostly blue region (with the exception of alaska), came in twice with the lowest ranking.
- the mountain states, a mostly red region, came in once with the lowest ranking.

the below average scorers on the three questions were (map of regions here):

pacific – 3 times
mountain – 3 times
middle atlantic (NEW YORK! nj & pa) – 3 times
west north central (nd, sd, ne, ks, mn, ia, mo) – one time
south atlantic (de, md, dc, va, wv, nc, sc, ga, fl) – one time
east north central (wi, il, mi, in, oh) – one time

to me, it seems like there’s an east-west divide — white familism decreases around the rocky mountains and gets even lower on the west coast. i should’ve made some maps. maybe i’ll work on that.
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so, back to jayman’s question: “Are Whites in the South and West *today* more kin-centric?”

yes, whites in the south are pretty kin-centric, but not so much in the west. and new englanders are very kin-centric — so there! (^_^) new yorkers are not.

i’ve got the data for african-americans, too, so i’ll check them out in another post.

previously: familism in the u.s. of a. and hispanic family values

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civicness in mexico

well, this is interesting. checking the world values survey for the “civicness” questions results for mexico (2005), it seems that, in mexico, the most civic people are those that are more indio, while whites are generally the least civic. it’s not the strongest of patterns, but i do think it’s there.

the sample sizes for the “indigenous” group are too small, but i included them anyway ’cause they’re such an interesting group. keep in mind when looking at the table and graphs, though, that the numbers for that group are prolly not representative. still, they do seem to fall in line with the general pattern of: more indio=more civic >> less indio=less civic.

here’s a table for ya (click on image for LARGER view):

the average scores for mexico in total are lower than those for white americans in all of the categories except for church going and sport/recreation (gooooaaaallll!). the number of active members of labor unions is slightly higher in mexico than amongst white americans. the number of active members in a political party amongst whites in the u.s is almost double that of mexicans. (mexicans are more active in political parties than the chinese in vancouver, though!)

similarly, the average scores for whites in mexico are generally lower than those for white americans except, again, for church going and sport/recreation. again, the number of active members in a political party amongst whites in the u.s. is almost double that of whites in mexico. the art/music/education scores in the two groups are pretty close.

if the internet is telling the truth, most of the early spanish settlers in mexico came from andalusia and extremadura, which were both, of course, a part of al-andalus in the medieval period during which time the local population picked up on the cousin-marrying practices of the arab conquerers — at least in andalusia they did anyway. in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spanish immigrants to the new world came from places like galicia and asturias. not sure what the long-term mating practices in those places have been, but i suspect a history of close marriages in galicia. don’t quote me on that though. the point being that, in general, the spanish settlers in mexico didn’t have the outbreeding history of the anglos further north in the americas.

hispanics in the u.s. — who are not all mexicans, of course — score higher than mexicans on being active members in: church/religious organizations, labor unions and, mostly notably, political parties (12.40% for hispanics in the u.s. versus 9.70% in mexico). the rest of the scores are lower for hispanics in the u.s. than for mexicans in mexico. i’ll have to try to see if i can work out the scores for the different hispanic groups in the u.s. (mexican vs. puerto rican for instance).

enough talk. here are some charts comparing the civicness of the different groups in mexico. i threw in white americans, too, to make it interesting (click on graphs for LARGER views):

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii and civicness in the u.s. by race and la endogamia en la españa medieval

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a sense of entitlement ii

i babbled something the other day about some groups maybe having a stronger sense of entitlement than others and wondered, if so, which ones those might be. so, i did a little digging around in the world values survey to see if i could find anything interesting.

i was looking for any question/s related to redistribution of wealth issues, and this is the closest one i could find in the last survey wave (2005-2008):

Many things may be desirable, but not all of them are essential characteristics of democracy. Please tell me for each of the following things how essential you think it is as a characteristic of democracy. Use this scale where 1 means *not at all an essential characteristic of democracy* and 10 means it definitely is *an essential characteristic of democracy*: Governments tax the rich and subsidize the poor.

i know, not the perfect question. but let’s see what the results looked like anyway (see also previous post). here are the percentages of respondents answering *10* to that question — governments taxing the rich and subsidizing the poor is *definitely* an essential characteristic of democracy:

the global average is 24.9%. all of the anglo nations (great britain, u.s., canada, australia) score well below that, with australia having the most redistributive inclinations at 12.5%. most of the other european countries also score below the global average, except for romania, germany and russia. the russian federation has got the highest score of all european nations at 44.5%. (i should’ve done a breakdown of the russian fed. by region, but i didn’t. maybe i’ll work on that.)

in asia, the thais, japanese, and taiwanese all score lower — way lower — than the global average. meanwhile, the chinese, south koreans, vietnamese and indonesians are over the global average.

the interesting group, again, are the arabs/north africans/middle easterners (in green) — the father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) marrying folks. all but one (iran) included in the survey are waaaay above the global average: iraq (34.2%), morocco (35.4%), egypt (58%) and jordan (62.9%). these folks often seem to be found in the extremes of surveys/studies — recall the connection between pathogens and consanguinity, and the fact that fbd marriage groups are very consanguineous despite not living in pathogen-rich environments. curious.

finally, (*envelope please*) — and the winner is — india! at 72.7%.

you’d think that poorer countries would be more interested in redistribution of wealth than richer ones, but that doesn’t seem to be the case — at least not 100% of the time. one of the countries least interested in their democratic government (if they have one) redistributing wealth is rwanda. meanwhile, germany’s not poor, but they’re all about the redistribution of wealth apparently.

in the united states, whites scored lower than the u.s. average (6.6%) at 5.8%. the “others” (asians?) scored even lower at just 3%. hispanics and blacks both desire greater redistribution of wealth in america than whites (but you already knew that!):

mexicans back in mexico score on average 18.20% on the question, with white mexicans desiring the least redistribution of wealth, indios wanting the most, and mestizos somewhere in between:

i wanted to check out the numbers for great britain by race, but the sample sizes were too small (<50) for groups like blacks and south asians, so i checked out g.b. by region instead:

prolly can’t tell much from the london score since that is such a “vibrant” city. i’m not at all surprised to see the peripheral populations in g.b. being (like the arab cousin marriers) more interested in redistributing wealth: folks up north and the north west (cumbria’s in the north west), yorkshire and humberside. meanwhile, the english long-term outbreeders in the midlands and south east don’t want the wealth shared around. dunno what to make of the scots, though! i would’ve expected to see them with a high score. hmmmmm.

i also checked out the regional scores for china having in mind that i have the impression (impression) that cousin/endogamous marriage and clans have always been more frequent/stronger in southern china than in the north (which would fit the pathogen-consanguinity theory, btw). i found that there is a -0.47 correlation between latitude and desire for the redistribution of wealth in china — the further south you go, the more people want the wealth spread around (i.e. to them) [latitudes grabbed from geohack]:

lastly, india. i broke the india numbers down by region before, so this time i thought i’d look at them by religion:

a LOT of people in india are very enthusiastic about redistributing wealth. muslims and hindus the most (muslims more than hindus), christians and sikhs the least — christians least of all. recall that muslims in india have the highest rates of consanguineous marriage in india, while sikhs and christians have the lowest rates.

(note: n>50 for all cases. way more than 50 on the national level.)

previously: a sense of entitlement and democracy and the redistribution of wealth

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who’s outbreeding the most?

ron (a little facetiously i think) asks: “Is there any evidence that the Germans in America have become heavy inbreeders?”

i highly doubt it (and no one around here suggested that, btw). but it did get me to wondering which ethnic european-americans (i.e. whites) are outbreeding the most. so i checked the — you guessed it! — gss.

here are the percentages of respondents answering that their spouses were from the same ethnic background as themselves (of course, who knows how many of these people actually have mixed backgrounds):

danish = 9%
french = 9%

swedes = 12%
scottish = 13%
czechoslovakians = 18%

norwegians = 23%
polish = 27%
irish = 29%

netherlands = 31%
russians = 33%
italians = 34%
french canadians = 35%
germans = 36%
english/welsh = 39%

mexicans = 54%

i know — are these mexicans whites? i dunno. whatever. in any case, “white” mexicans marry other mexicans at a rate of 54%. that’s the highest rate for any of these groups.

the english/welsh group and the german-americans place next in the race for marrying their own kind — 39% and 36% respectively. their percentages are prolly so “high” in part because there are a lot of english-/welsh- and german-americans from which to choose.

only 9% of danish-americans are married to other danish-americans. the largest majority of them, 20%, have married german-americans. twenty percent (20%) of swedish-americans have married german-americans, too.

scottish-americans win the prize for marrying the most english/welsh at a rate of 41%. that’s more than the english/welsh marry themselves! (~_^) the czechoslovakians like the english/welsh, too — 21% of them have married anglo-/welsh-americans.

french-americans (not french canadians) like to marry irish-americans — 22% of them are married to irish-americans.

something like half of the russians, btw, are ashkenazi jews, presumably marrying other ashkenazi jews, although i didn’t actually check for that.

what’s pretty obvious from these numbers is that, apart from the mexicans, most white american ethnic groups are marrying out quite a LOT nowadays. dunno how long this has been going on (i tried to sort the data by cohort but that crashed my computer — twice. so i gave up.)

that is all.
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gss nesstar search: RACE + ETHNIC + SPETHNIC
n > 50 in all cases.

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irish-american iqs

or wordsum scores, rather.

donnacha thinks that i make too much out of any possible differences between different groups that came Out of Ireland — scots irish vs. native irish, for example.

they look different in the gss though.

if we look at the mean wordsum scores for protestant irish-americans vs. roman catholic irish-americans, they look like this:

protestant irish-americans = 6.08
roman catholic irish-americans = 6.99

now wordsum scores are not the exact equivalents of iq scores, but they are an ok proxy. (to convert wordsum scores to iq scores, see the awesome epigone.) in any case, the point is that the scores between different sub-populations of irish-americans are different.

why? i dunno.

but i can tell you that the largest group of gss protestant-irish (24% of the total) is found in the south atlantic region of the u.s. (virginia, west virgina, the carolinas, etc.) and another 14% are in the east south central region (kentucky, tennessee, etc.), so i’m gonna call this group as being largely scots-irish — hackett fischer’s backcountry folks.

meanwhile, a full 32% of gss roman catholic irish-americans grew up in the mid-atlantic region (new york, new jersey, pennsylvania). another 21% are in the east north central region (illinois, wisconsin, michigan). by virtue of their religion and their settlement patterns, i’m gonna call this group as being largely native irish.

so i think that there are differences between scots-irish folks and native irish — at least in the u.s.

why there should be a difference in iq between the two groups, i’m not sure. inbreeding depression? the native irish and the lowland scots (the ancestors of the scots-irish) both had long histories of inbreeding. and a lot of the scots-irish in the u.s. certainly kept right on inbreeding after they got here. but the irish back in ireland seem to have still been inbreeding probably into the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, too. not by the mid-twentieth century, though.

dunno. that might not be it at all. perhaps the roman catholic irish simply started outbreeding more once they got to the u.s. unlike the scots-irish. again, dunno. maybe it’s something else.
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speaking of protestant vs. roman catholic iqs, here are the wordsum scores for german-americans:

protestant german-americans = 6.17
roman-catholic german-americans = 6.50
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gss nesstar searches:

1) RACE (OF RESPONDENT) + ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN) + RELIGION (IN WHICH RAISED) + WORDSUM
2) REGION OF RESIDENCE (AGE 16) + RACE (OF RESPONDENT) + ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN) + RELIGION (IN WHICH RAISED)

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more from ron unz on iq

ron unz has a new post up: Unz on Race/IQ: The Rural/Urban Divide. he says:

“[O]ne very intriguing pattern is that according to Lynn’s IQ data certain European populations such as the South Italians, Irish, Greeks, and South Slavs tended to have IQs much lower than other European populations such as the British and the Dutch. However, according to the Wordsum-IQ data, this pattern is exactly reversed in the United States, with the descendents of immigrants from Southern Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Yugoslavia having much higher IQs than Americans of British or Dutch ancestry.”

as i (and others) have already pointed out to ron, he has no way of knowing from the gss data if italian- or irish- or greek- or slavic-americans are comparable to the italians and irish and greeks and slavs back in europe. for one thing, there is the problem with the irish of which irish we’re talking about, both in the u.s. and in the republic of ireland. native irish? scots-irish? anglo-irish? for another thing, how italian or slavic is someone who self-identifies themself as italian or slavic on the gss? fully? one-half? one-quarter? (is obama black or white?) if you don’t have your populations sorted out from the start, any comparisons will be a waste of time.

also, where are the wordsum data for all these groups? i mean, i know they’re in the gss, but how about a chart or a link or at least some search terms for the searches conducted. most sciencey bloggers nowadays present their data, not just write lengthy articles with barely any references. ron is making some strong, and possibly very interesting, claims here. someone out there might like to try to replicate his findings.

and how about looking at other data in additon to the gss (if possible)? chuck (the occidentalist) has shown that the gss wordsum scores for mexican-americans aren’t in accord with other iq measurements for that population, so maybe it would be a good idea to look at some additional data, too. just to be on the safe side. (note that i’m not discounting the gss wordsum data completely. i understand that it’s a fairly good proxy for iq scores.)
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ron also again rejects the idea that european immigrants to the u.s. (and elsewhere) might have “self-sorted” themselves — i.e. higher iq folks emigrating leaving lower iq folks behind, thus resulting in low average iqs back in europe and higher iqs for these populations in their new homes. because he believes this, ron concludes that nineteenth century european immigrants to the u.s., and europeans back in europe, have experienced extraordinary increases in their iqs in the last couple of generations:

“Finally, let us consider the European evidence. Today, the international PISA academic tests are widely regarded as one of the best means of estimating national IQs, and if we consider the 2009 PISA scores, we find that the scores were extremely similar for Ireland, Poland, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and several other countries. Since Lynn standardizes the British IQ to 100, that indicates that Ireland and Poland today have IQs around 100, which seems quite plausible.

“However, a huge sample placed Ireland’s IQ at 87 in 1972, and Lynn himself has stated that his own Ireland research in the late 1960s convinced him that the Irish were a low IQ population, whose only hope for the future lay in a strong eugenics program. So the evidence indicates that the Irish IQ was around 87 at that point, and has risen nearly a full standard deviation in the four decades which followed. Lynn also provides two additional very large samples, which placed the Irish IQ at around 92 in the early 1990s, so at the half-way mark, the Irish IQ had risen by half the difference between the endpoints, which seems remarkably consistent.

“Obviously, for the Irish to raise their Flynn-adjusted IQ by nearly a full standard devision in just over one generation is a total absurdity from a genetic perspective; thus, the huge rise must be due to some class of ‘environmental’ factors. When we consider that Ireland had been one of most rural European countries and rapidly urbanized during exactly that period, the impact of urbanization seems a plausible possibility.”

to repeat, i don’t think ron has convincingly shown what the iqs of italian- and irish-, etc., americans are, so it remains difficult to compare the old and new world iqs for each of these populations. and several commenters (like in this discussion thread) have suggested that the one figure of 87 for the irish in 1972 is just one figure, so perhaps it’s not all that reliable. (the data on which that 87 score is based upon are from a master’s thesis, btw. i found the reference here – opens pdf.)

but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that figure was correct. ron doesn’t think that this low score could’ve been the result of selective migration because he thinks the immigrants would’ve been from the lowest classes of european society (i.e. presumably those with the lowest iqs):

“Even if we ignore all contemporaneous evidence and argue that 19th century European immigrants to America and elsewhere somehow constituted the IQ elite of their originating countries, the theory of selective migration still remains implausible…. So even if we hypothesize that the Irish, South Italians, Jews, and Greeks who immigrated to America constituted the smartest small slice of their generation — rather than, as seems more likely, often the poorer and most miserable….”

this, however, is an erroneous assumption. from thomas sowell’s Ethnic America: A History (pgs. 22-23):

“Although the cost of a trip to the United States in the hold of a cargo vessel was less than ten pounds sterling (less than fifty dollars at contemporary exchange rates), the poorest of the Irish could not afford even that, so that immigration was very low from the poorest fourth of the Irish population. Those a notch above them on the economic scale emigrated in large numbers, often by selling their belongings, using up savings, and spending money sent by relatives already in America. From one-third to three-quarters of the Irish immigrations to America in the 1830s and 1840s was financed by money sent from North America.”

so, as i said in my previous post, it wasn’t “the poorer and most miserable”, or even “the smartest small slice of their generation” that emigrated from ireland to the u.s. (or britain or australia), but folks in the middle — individuals above “the poorest fourth of the Irish population”. in other words, people of average-ish iqs.

and they left in the millions. for 140-150+ years.

if that wasn’t a dysgenic brain drain, i don’t know what was.

and all that emigration (and famine-related deaths) is reflected in this population graph for the republic of ireland:

the population of the republic of ireland seems to have bottomed out just around the time of lynn’s 87 iq score for the irish in the 1970s. the irish economy improved in fits and starts in the decades after that, and really took off in the heydays of the celtic tiger nineties and noughties (how’d that work out for them anyway?). then there wasn’t any need for anyone with half a brain to leave the country anymore — and there was an additon of something like 1.4 million individuals in two-and-a-half generations (ca. a 35% increase in the population) — and the iq scores started to improve (as ron points out the average iq was measured to be 93 in the early 1990s) — possibly (i’d say likely) as the national average regressed to its natural mean (whatever that might be, presumably higher than 87). (plus the usual flynn effect and possibly effects of better nutrition and other stuff like that.)

that scenario is a strong possibilty anyway, which ron just dismisses based on very shaky evidence.

speaking of dysgenic brain drains, how about southern italy? according to wikipedia (so it must be true!), 80% of immigrants from italy to the u.s. came from southern italy. and look at the iq (pisa) scores there today.

(btw, i don’t think this mass emigration scenario is the whole story re. the low iq scores for the peripheral european countries, but it certainly shouldn’t be discounted as easily as ron has done.)
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ron theorizes that these differences in average iqs have something to do with urban vs. rural living, which is an interesting idea, but he hasn’t made a convincing argument i think. he talks, for instance, about differences in iqs between urban and rural white americans:

“Next, consider the aggregate IQs of rural and urban/suburban whites. During the 1970s according to Wordsum-IQ data, the intelligence gap between whites raised on farms and those who grew up in an urban/suburban background was enormous, almost exactly equal to the white/black gap.”

well, that’s interesting, but again i ask — where are the data? (show me the data! (~_^) )
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finally, ron says:

“Unfortunately, this discussion has been almost entirely restricted to narrow racialist circles, with virtually all non-racialist journalists or pundits maintaining a studious silence on the matter and giving the controversy a very wide berth, although I would argue that issues of race and intelligence have considerable importance in American society.”

i agree! the situation is unfortunate. very unfortunate. i wish everybody would think and talk about human biodiversity all the time! (ok, maybe not all of the time.) i wish it were a regular topic on oprah! (does she even have a show anymore?) i can’t see how we’re gonna solve even half the world’s problems if we don’t — but then i’m beginning to suspect that most people aren’t really interested in that (prolly me, neither). *sigh*

thanks to ron for bringing up the subject at all! (^_^) (although i think there are big holes in his argument. (~_^) )

previously: ron unz and iq and mexican-american iq and a message for ron unz

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