Freakanomics 
by Stephen Levitt (2005)
read: 5 July 2005
rating: [+]
category: non-fiction
I just finished reading Freakonomics, sort of a lightweight look at social issues, from a Econ 101 point of view. I learned that the illegal drug trade is only very profitable to those at the very top and thus most drug dealers still live with mama. I learned that real estate agents really don’t have your best interests at heart. Actually, I think I already knew that. And I learned that parents don’t matter, or more specifically what we do doesn’t matter. Economist Steven Levitt argues that almost all academic success can be explained by who your parents are, not by what they do for you. Basically, if you are born into a middle class family with parents who both went to college, you are overwhelming likely to do fine in school. Parents that stay home, take junior to museums and do all that other stuff have no measurable impact on junior’s academic success. He did regression analysis on a bunch of government data to get to this conclusion. My immediate thought was…so why the hell am I homeschooling my kids? I’m kidding, that was not my first thought. My first thought was that this guy has a pHD from the University of Chicago and it never occurred to him to think about whether or not all those school tests actually measure anything meaningful. So he’s proved that parents don’t influence the outcome of their kid’s school careers. He didn’t bother to check into whether or not “school success” had any relevance beyond meaningless social sciences studies. That seems to be a hell of a lot more interesting question.
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