What are real wages like in lower middle class America compared to Asian or African countries that have a fraction of the rate of kids being raised without both parents?
They had this to say about marriage in traditional African cultures:
“ Marriage in the traditional African society was described by Evans Pritchard (1965) as a “given”, there was no such thing as unmarried adult woman or one who was childless by choice; ... and women could not choose a career instead of marriage” (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). Most African societies had sanctions for childbearing outside marriage, in some East African communities, it was punishable by death, in other places in Africa it was abortion or infanticide (Gage and Bledsoe 1994). There was no place for permanent singlehood except for religious celibates.”
On the increasing rates of single motherhood:
“ The rising levels of single motherhood in the region is occasioned in part by adaptation to changes brought about by education, mobility associated with employment, gendered migration, poverty, shortage of marriageable men, increased death rate due to HIV/AIDS pandemic, decline in early and arranged marriage and polygyny (Gage and Bledsoe 1994; Isiugo-Abanihe 2000; Gustafsson and Worku 2006; Smith 2007; Moyo and Kawewe 2009).”
My guess is the reason we see lower rates of single motherhood in very poor countries is less to do with the fact they are poor and more likely to be because they are closer to their traditional cultural norms that strongly push for marriage and child rearing. It seems as countries get greater access to education and industrialization, as they modernize, they start to see these societal issues like single parent households and the negative consequences that result from that.
Kinda like how as societies get greater access to more food they move from starving to getting obese and those associated medical issues.
That would be interesting to see. Maybe you can show us the numbers, adjust for COL, adjust for definition of success, adjust for academic differences, and adjust for cultural biases.
But the argument is that Bangladeshi villages are more peaceful than American inner cities, despite being vastly poorer, because of cultural reasons. It’s almost as if America has a more traditional culture in the past—when it was poorer than today—and then there were massive cultural changes around the same time crime started skyrocketing.
I do want to throw in an alternative. Is it cultural, or are we all disconnected from the communities we live in because we now all view our communities as existing online? People used to be able name everyone who lived on their street and knew where they worked and a little bit about them. I have a feeling this is becoming a lot more rare. And it isn't so much of culture, but of becoming disconnected with the communities we live in. The Bangladeshi village is having BBQs with neighbors, not sitting on the couch doom scrolling twitter or consuming hours of tiktok videos.
Because people know their neighbors personally, they are less likely to steal and more likely to intervene when they see someone they don't know snooping around someone else's property. Or hell, even know who lives in the house.
I think that's partially true, at least for the people who have motive to steal. But generally, you go to a different neighborhood to steal, not your own. It's not hard to go a couple blocks to where you don't know people, and more importantly where they don't know you.
But then you ignored the other part. When you know the people on your block, you know who should and shouldn't be there and will probably be more likely to intervene is you see someone you've never seen before walking around Billy Bob's house while Billy Bob's car isn't there.
