http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-14-2011/edward-glaeser
After seeing this, I decided to read his book because several of his claims seemed a little far fetched. It's well-written, but he doesn't cite many of the studies that he refers to. He is a very smart man, however, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of circumstances (i.e. that he is controlling for the right things and that the effects that he claims to be measuring are actually what he is measuring).
However, yesterday as I read it, I came across a passage where he was talking about the fall of Detroit. As evidence, he says that "the current median income in Detroit is $33,000, which is about half of the US average." I assume he means the US mean income because the median is around $40,000. It is odd to me that he would try to compare median and mean incomes when the mean of income data is systematically higher than the median (and particularly since comparing medians would have also supported his point). What he said is true, but it is definitely misleading.
So question one: What do people think about Glaeser's claim that large cities are better for the economy, mental and physical health, the environment, etc.?
Question two: To what degree are authors accountable to avoid true but misleading information, especially when the audience of the writing is primarily people who should be able to recognize this?
After seeing this, I decided to read his book because several of his claims seemed a little far fetched. It's well-written, but he doesn't cite many of the studies that he refers to. He is a very smart man, however, and I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in a lot of circumstances (i.e. that he is controlling for the right things and that the effects that he claims to be measuring are actually what he is measuring).
However, yesterday as I read it, I came across a passage where he was talking about the fall of Detroit. As evidence, he says that "the current median income in Detroit is $33,000, which is about half of the US average." I assume he means the US mean income because the median is around $40,000. It is odd to me that he would try to compare median and mean incomes when the mean of income data is systematically higher than the median (and particularly since comparing medians would have also supported his point). What he said is true, but it is definitely misleading.
So question one: What do people think about Glaeser's claim that large cities are better for the economy, mental and physical health, the environment, etc.?
Question two: To what degree are authors accountable to avoid true but misleading information, especially when the audience of the writing is primarily people who should be able to recognize this?
2 comments:
I think you need to give Glaeser more benefit than this. US median household income is much higher than $40k. You must be confusing household with individual income. As of 2007, the census reports median household income for Detroit to be $28,097 and for the US to be $50,233.
Although I'm not really an economics major, and I haven't read the book, I do have to object a little to the claim that cities are "better" for the enviroment, population health, etc than other areas. Economically they probably make a lot more sense, but cities have a lot of health issues that suburban or rural areas do not, such as easier spread of disease, higher concentration of pollution and other issues. Further, assuming that city people have more face to face contact than other populations assumes that all city people are sociable, which is kind of disingenuous.
Not only that, but cities are unable to exist independently in the first place. Crops from rural areas have to be shipped in for cities to survive, and suburbs likely contribute to the workforce the city needs to run effectively without having to deal with the strain of additional housing. To say that the city is "better" ignores these kinds of relationships.
As for the writer being accountable to avoid misleading information, I would say that if an author wants to be considered an authority on a specific subject avoiding such half-truths would probably be a high priority. Otherwise he would just undermine himself by allowing his thesis to be nitpicked and weakened thanks to a poor presentation of the evidence. Sorry for the long post. Just my two cents anyway. :)
Post a Comment