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Emil Kirkegaard

Aug 14, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X

Private market fans are usually a fan of private education. The trouble is that educational outcomes are mostly just genetics, so there isn't much room for improvement. One way to study this is to look at school voucher randomized trials.

This meta-analysis shows that they don't do anything for reading or math ability in the West. The results for non-Western countries are larger, but not very trustworthy due to rampant scientific misconduct in those countries. Shrug tier.

Private education probably preferable on other grounds, but not for actual learning outcomes.

The Participant Effects of Private School Vouchers Across the Globe: A Meta-Analytic and Systematic Review

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Reminders about rampant scientific dishonesty outside the West.

emilkirkegaard.com/p/scientific-m…

Randomized trials from outside the West very often have fraudulent or impossible data.

…-publications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

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More from @KirkegaardEmil

Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Jan 20

The racism of teachers

In Germany, non-German students (anyone with "migration background") get lower grades and test scores.

Due to their politics, teachers are expected to have some bias towards girls, minorities, low-SES etc. students. So do they? The authors find that, yes, they do.

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Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Jan 11

The decline of intelligence, as measured by genetic scores.

The decline of intelligence estimated by fertility and intelligence correlations by country.

The decline of human average intelligence to come, as seen by the fertility rates and national IQs.

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Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Jan 10

New Dutch results on immigration. Sobering as usual. There are 3.7 million foreigners in the Netherlands.

One can calculate a given person's contribution to the state budget by adding up all their contributions (revenue) and subtracting all of their costs. Doing so gives a net contribution metric. Dutch people are c. net 0, and the others groups net negatives.

There's a lot of variation though. Numbers for the first generation can be very positive or negative. It's easier to get very positive values because many people arrive after having finished their education, so begin working immediately. Many of them leave before pension too.

Read 9 tweets

Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Jan 8

Many of you have seen this figure. A pessimist's favorite. A massive innovation decline starting from 1880 or so.

It fits suspiciously well with the onset of dysgenic fertility in NW Europe, or at least the UK.

However, does this really work this way? It's based on a 2004 book called The History of Science and Technology that recorded significant events from 3000 BC to 2003 or so. But what if the author missed newer stuff that wasn't recognized as important yet?

Read 9 tweets

Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Oct 24, 2024

Does democracy or self-governance do something to your personality or values? Maybe yes says this clever study of Switzerland.

In ... 1218 the last ruler of Zähringen dies, leaving no heir, so the lands revert to imperial rule and gain some kind of self-governance.

It appears, these areas are still to this day higher in cooperative attitudes and voting turnout. It can't be explained in terms of crude sociological factors, and due to the geographical diversity, one can also employ fixed effects, none of which remove the pattern.

Most importantly, p-values are good.

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Emil Kirkegaard

@KirkegaardEmil

Sep 8, 2024

Even extreme luck from natural resources does not outweigh psychology in explaining variation in wealth. Take Nauru, the fattest country in the world, 95% are overweight and 70%+ are obese.

In the 1970s, they mined bird poo (guano) and sold it so that their country was the wealthiest in the world GDP per capita (population about 10k Polynesians). The plan was to put the money into a national trust fund, like Norway does. The interests from this massive wealth would enable them to basically finance a welfare state perpetually. However, it was not to be due to "mismanagement and corruption". Today they are about as poor as they were to begin with. Rags to riches to rags.