familism in the u.s. of a.

following up from yesterday’s post, i thought i’d look at familism in some other ethnic groups in the u.s. in addition to the anglos and mexicans.

again, i’m looking at how much contact the individuals from different groups have with family members. this is a way of measuring “behavioral familism” — familism “expressed in everyday actions, or major decisions, informed by one’s attachment to family ties”. this time i stuck to just extended-family members (aunt/uncles, nieces/nephews, cousins) ’cause i thought that might be more telling — if you’re in regular contact … a LOT … with these more distant relatives, you’re probably familistic. that’s my thinking, anyway.

looked at the following questions from the 2002 general social survey:

- “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.”

i’ve collapsed the first two together to make the responses sorta “yes” or “no” (contacted x in the last 4 weeks). i also skipping the “no living relative” answer. if you’re dying to see all data, i can post it.

the variables chosen were: COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN, HOW OFTEN DOES R CONTACT UNCLES OR AUNTS, HOW OFTEN DOES R CONTACT NIECES AND NEPHEWS, HOW OFTEN DOES R CONTACT COUSIN, and for the irish RELIGION IN WHICH RAISED to try to distinguish the scotch-irish from roman catholic irish. none of it is perfect, i know, but you gotta work with whatcha got.

the countries with a good-sized data set (n≧50) were: england & wales (the “anglos” – n=96), italy (n=53-54), scotch-irish (protestant irish – n=51), and germany (n=150). the mexicans (n=32) and irish catholics (n=42-43) came up a little short, but i’ve included them anyway. keep in mind that the numbers for those two groups are kinda low.

without further ado (click on charts for LARGER views)…

“How often do you contact your uncles/aunts?”

“How often do you contact your nieces/nephews?”

“How often do you contact your cousin(s)?”

as you can see, in each of the three categories, all of the other groups are in contact with their distant-ish relatives more than the anglos — except for the scotch-irish who appear to behave the most like the anglos here. mexicans are much more likely to keep in regular contact with their aunts/uncles or nieces/nephews than anglo-americans (53% vs. 32% and 75% vs. 48% respectively), but italian-americans are also much more likely to keep in touch with their aunts/uncles on a monthly basis (47%). the roman catholic irish, too, more familistic than anglo-americans — and even german-americans, except for the keeping-in-touch-with-nieces/nephews category, appear to be more familistic than anglo-americans.

so much for assimilation.

remember that familism goes hand-in-hand with fun things like corruption.

i also think it’s kinda neat to see that the familism goes more in the direction of the genetic flow than not: greater contact by aunts/uncles to nieces/nephews than the reverse, for instance. cool.

previously: anglo-american vs. mexican family values

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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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distributions of wordsum scores

i know, i know. they’re just wordsum scores. i agree. but just for the fun of it…

…here are the distributions of the gss wordsum scores for german-americans, protestant irish-american (i.e. scots irish) and roman catholic irish-americans (“native” irish). recall that the mean scores are:

german-americans = 6.25
protestant irish-americans = 6.08
roman catholic irish-americans = 6.99

x-axis=number of wordsum words right (0 through 10). y-axis=percent of each group who got x-many words right. see what you make of it (click on chart for LARGER view):

the german-american (yellow) and protestant irish-american (blue) distributions look normal-ish, while the roman catholic irish-american (red-orange) distribution has got a weird(?) bump at nine words. dunno what that might mean, if anything. -?-

oh yeah:

german-americans – n=3316
protestant irish-americans – n=7278
roman catholic irish-americans – n=6351

previously: irish-american iqs

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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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ron unz’s rural/urban data…

…just don’t hold water.

yesterday, using the nesstar gss data, i showed that ron’s statement that…

“German-Americans … are significantly more rural than the white American average”

… is untrue. they are not. the white american average of “ruralness” is 27% (according to the nesstar gss data). thirty-three percent (33%) of german-americans live in rural areas. that’s just a six point difference from the average. it’s higher than average, but not a LOT. meanwhile, 41% of white american-americans (“american only”) live in rural areas. that’s significantly more than the white american average. (only ca. 10% of italian- and greek-americans live in rural areas.)

today i took a look at the sda gss data (no, apparently i don’t have a life). here’s a screenshot of my search parameters so you can see what the h*ck i did (click on image for LARGER view):

the results are — not all that different from yesterday’s results (click on image for LARGER view — should open in a new tab/window — you might have to click on it there to get it to be full-sized):

dutch-americans are, indeed, very rural. and italian- and greek- and yugoslav-americans are all very urban. german-americans are quite rural, but again not much more than anglo-, scots- or even irish-americans. and american-americans are more rural than german-americans.

for some of the groups, i added to the chart the iq scores that the awesome epigone calculated based on the gss wordsum test results. as the a.e. said:

“Contrary to Unz’ assertion, those of English or Welsh descent outscore Italians, Irish, Greeks, and Slavs, though the Dutch do not.”

nor do the germans.

ron’s idea is that urban living produces a sort-of super-flynn effect — at least for peoples of european stock. so you’d think that there ought to be a positive correlation between high average iqs for white americans and urban living — the more urban a group, the higher the iq, right?

well, i can’t find any such correlation. i get a correlation of precisely zip for white american urban-ness and high iq. below is a little chart showing that absent correlation. the x-axis represents my “rural-urban index” (“difference %rural-%urban” from my table above) — more urban is to the left, more rural is to the right. the y-axis represents the awesome epigone’s iq scores. as bob would say, that’s a scatter plot:

several of the highest white american iqs are held by rural groups: swiss-americans (103.6 – 42% rural), norwegian-americans (102.1 – 38% rural), danish-americans (102.6 – 32% rural), and anglo-americans (102.4 – 29% rural). the swiss and norwegians started off rural back in europe and stayed pretty rural in the u.s. — more so than the germans — but they’re awfully smart in the u.s. why don’t they have low average iqs? the danish- and anglo-americans started off pretty urban back in europe, but now they’re rural in the u.s., but they’re smart, too. what is going on?

meanwhile, white puerto ricans are some of the most urban (92% urban) of all these groups and their iq is only 89.9. and whites from mexico, too — very urban (80% urban) — but with an average iq of 87.7.

nope. i just don’t think this rural/urban explanation is gonna work.

previously: rural white americans

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rural white americans

i admit it: this old/new world european, rural/urban iq discussion is starting make my head spin. (o_O) but i’m going to stick with it, d*mnit! (~_^)

ok. lemme see if i’ve got this straight. ron thinks that living in a stimulating urban environment raises the average iqs of certain populations a LOT in a relatively short period of time — like in a couple of generations. examples? europeans? check. east asians? nope. mexicans? he thinks so. blacks? he doesn’t say. the upshot is: iq is not something that is strongly genetic, and so we shouldn’t be too worried about tens of millions of mexicans moving to the united states ’cause they’re just gonna become smart like us in no time at all.

hmmmm.

his proof of this consists (in part) of: 1) the rising iq of mexicans in the u.s. over the last two generations or so — only chuck the occidentalist has shown that this does NOT seem to be the case; and 2) the rising iqs of rural europeans who became urbanites after moving to the u.s., and the falling iqs of urban europeans who became country hicks after moving to the u.s. ron says:

“A much better example I should have used instead were German-Americans, who are significantly more rural than the white American average and have a Wordsum-IQ below the Greeks, Yugoslavs, Irish, and Italians. Furthermore, according to Lynn’s IQ data, Germans have one of the highest IQs in Europe, significantly above the British and far, far above the Irish, Greeks, (South) Italians, and Yugoslavs. So the reversal in America is even more inexplicable from a genetic model of IQ.

“Thus, my comparison using ‘British and Dutch’ should be changed to ‘Germans and Dutch,’ with the two highest IQ nationalities in Europe becoming two of the lowest white IQ ethnicities in America, even as they switched from being among the most urbanized Europeans to generally being rural in America, while the Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Yugoslavs moved in the opposite direction on both the IQ and rural fronts. This seems far too strong to merely be coincidence.”

so according to ron, the germans and the dutch are generally rural in america while the greeks, irish, italians, and yugoslavs are urban. and the german-americans are significantly more rural than other white americans.

ron says he got this data from the gss by looking up the following search terms (thanks, ron!):

“As for my GSS calculation, I just used RACE=WHITE, ETHNIC, and WORDSUM. My ethnic urban/rural estimate substituted RES16 for WORDSUM, and I considered Country+Farm as being ‘rural’ while ‘City+Suburb+Big City’ was considered urban. The Italians, Irish, Greeks, and Yugoslavs come out heavily urban, the Dutch heavily rural, and the Germans somewhat rural.”

i never know what people mean when they say they looked something up in the gss ’cause you can use a couple of different databases: there’s the sda @berkeley which has data from 1972 through 2010, and the nesstar database which has data from 1972 through 2006. i’ve elected to use the nesstar database ’cause you can easily download a spreadsheet of whatever data you’re looking at. if you can do that on the sda site, i haven’t figured it out (if you know, please tell me!). so, if ron used the sda site, his results might be a bit different than mine.

having said that, i looked at RACE, ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN), and RES16 (TYPE OF PLACE LIVED IN WHEN 16 YRS OLD). i looked at the raw data so i could calculate the percentage of rural and urban residents for each of the different ethnic groups. rural=“in open country, but not on a farm” and “on a farm”. urban=“in a small town or city (less than 50,000),” “in a medium sized city (50,000-250,000),” “in a suburb near a large city,” and “in a large city (over 250,000).”

here’s what i got — i’ve sorted these results by most rural on the top to most urban on the bottom (i.e. the difference between rural and urban for each ethnic group) — click on chart for LARGER view (should open in a new window/tab — click on it again there to get it to be REALLY BIG):

dutch-americans certainly are very rural folk — they’re in the top 5 groups of white americans who live in rural areas, right after swiss-americans, belgian-americans, american-americans and finnish-americans. and italian-americans, greek-americans and yugoslav-americans are certainly more uban than rural — italians and greeks are very urban (confirming the stereotypes!).

but german-americans are hardly signficantly more rural than groups like anglo-, scots- or irish-americans. 33% of german-americans live (or grew up, rather, i guess) in a rural setting, while 29% of anglo-americans did, and 27% of both scots- and irish-americans. that’s awfully similar, afaics.

and what about the american-americans (“american only”)? who are they, anybody know? mightn’t they be a lot of anglo-, scots-, even irish-americans? i dunno, but they are very rural. and german-americans are less rural than they are.

also, as far as i know, finns and norwegians back in europe are pretty rural peoples — particularly in the nineteenth century when they immigrated in large numbers to the u.s. and they’re very rural here in the u.s. and today their iqs are pretty durned high back in their home countries. and the norwegian-american iq is pretty durned high here, too, despite the fact that they are still overwhelmingly rural in the u.s. (dunno about the finnish-americans.) so it doesn’t seem like you need to move to an urban place to get a high iq. you can start off rural and stay rural and still be very clever.

nope. don’t think i’m buying ron’s “move to the city and become smart” thesis. there seems to be too many exceptions to the rule (not that i don’t like those!): east asians, mexicans, anglos, scots, irish, germans, norwegians….

if i feel like it, i might process the sda gss data. then again i might not. again, if anyone knows how i can download it quickly into a spreadsheet, please let me know.

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

update 07/28: see also ron unz’s rural/urban data…

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