this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Economic inequality cannot be explained by individual bad choices, study finds (phys.org)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A global study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and published in the journal Scientific Reports finds that economic inequality on a social level cannot be explained by bad choices among the poor nor by good decisions among the rich. Poor decisions were the same across all income groups, including for people who have overcome poverty.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36339-2

The title of this article is /r/Politics levels of editorialising. I half expected to read, "our conclusion is that conservatives are clearly dumber."

The study used some simple tests to measure certain cognitive biases respondents might possess. Unsurprisingly, poor people are human, and subject to the same amount of bias as everyone else. This doesn't test the title of this submission - choices - at all. In fact the authors go to great lengths to explain this:

"Our research does not reject the notion that individual behavior and decision-making may directly relate to upward economic mobility. Instead, we narrowly conclude that biased decision-making does not alone explain a significant proportion of population-level economic inequality," says first author Kai Ruggeri, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia Public Health.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Does this mean r/Politics is in stage 4?

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