Social Networks' Sway May Be Underestimated

The same guys that brought us last year's study indicating that obesity is "contagious" are back with new research showing that smokers often quit in groups. The details are summarized in a Washington Post article today.

Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime. 

I think many missionaries would find this research to be confirmation of what they've known for years -- that people often make major decisions together in groups. The specifics vary from culture to culture, but this is just more evidence to suggest that we are wired to interact socially with each other. Making major decisions, even tough ones, based on social influence, doesn't seem that surprising.

This also leads us to think about the potential influence of online social networks. My guess is that additional research will find that the online connections are just an additional method of communication and that real personal connections must have an offline component.

Stats from The Week

The May 19th issue of The Week, by far my favorite news magazine, has its usual roundup of statistics snippets. These two caught my eye:

The New York City metropolitan area is home to 7 percent of the U.S. population and 23 percent of the psychiatrists. (from The New York Times) 

That's amazing yet completely believable. Presumably, the number of patients seen by these shrinks is much higher than 7 percent of the U.S. population as well.

Fifty-two percent of teenagers who signed an abstinence program's promise to remain virgins until marriage had sex within one year, according to a new study of 14,000 teens. (from the Los Angeles Times)

Well, I suppose that's also pretty believable, but it leaves out an important contrast: If you survey 14,000 teens who did not sign an abstinence agreement, what percentage of them remained virgins after a year? That would tell us something even more useful.

The Million Dollar Kid

This weekend's Wall Street Journal includes a piece about how much people spend on their children. They only focus on those in the top third income bracket, so as one would expect, there is some pretty shocking stuff here. The USDA estimates that the total cost to raise a child born in 2005 to these top earners is $279,450. I was unable to find any data this recent on the USDA web site, but there is some corroborative information on MSN Money. The WSJ says that the richest of the rich, so-called "Platinum" parents, spend up to $1.6 million to raise a child. Yikes!

Some of the extreme spending examples are incredible: $800 strollers, $1,000 birthday parties, etc. Other tidbits:

• Half of American teenagers own an MP3 player, and they each spend an average of $361 annually on iTunes downloads
• One in ten children now attends a private school
• The average domestic one-week vacation costs $1,830, and the average trip to Disney World is over $5,000 (uh... I think we'll skip that, thank you)
• Nearly two out of three teenagers has a cell phone
• Average cost of a 4-week summer camp is $3,000
  

After fifteen years in the toy industry, I am no longer surprised at the lengths to which some parents will go to give their children a "complete" experience or a competitive "edge." I've encountered my share of these parents over the years. In some cases I believe it actually reaches the point of child worship. Remarkably, though, most of the kids who don't have all these "advantages" seem to turn out just fine or better than the ones who "have it all."

To the immediate north of us is a very wealthy community, and just to our south is one that is decidedly middle class. Our city has people who would fit comfortably in either of these towns and a lot of people in between. Economically, we're a pretty heterogeneous community.

As I look at my kids' friends and get to know their parents, things generally seem pretty well balanced here. There are overactive over achievers and couch potato underachievers, and there seem to be some at each end of the economic spectrum of our community.

There's a Cost of Raising a Child Calculator on BabyCenter. It only goes back as far as birth year 1999, which is when Jack was born. Including college, it estimates that it will cost us $466,828 to raise Jack. They break the expenses down by category, it's actually somewhat believable. There are no splurge items listed.

Gallup Poll on Who We'd Vote For

This new Gallup poll (via Outside the Beltway) is pretty fascinating. One thing really caught my eye. Liberals are more likely to vote for candidates that meet any of the descriptions with one exception: someone 72 years of age. I wonder why that is.

Ten Times the Toys

There's an article in last Thursday's Wall Street Journal about the 2007 American International Toy Fair held last week in New York City.

It's no mystery (and no wonder) that the toy industry is in precarious shape in this country. That's not news, but a fascinating stat attributed to Eric Clark, author of a new book about the industry, grabbed my attention:

The problem for the fair, and the industry, seems to be oversaturation. In the U.S., in particular, 4% of the world's children consume more than 40% of the world's toys, according to Mr. Clark. Kids have more toys that hold their interest fleetingly at best.

Save Your Money on that MBA

On March 21, Ad Age published the results of a study showing that MBA degrees don't make marketers more likely to work for successful companies. In fact, it's a negative factor. Having an MBA means you're more likely to work for an underperforming company.

Marketing executives from 18 underperforming companies -- which had sales grow 7% less than their categories on average in the two years ended August 2005 -- were twice as likely to have been recruited out of M.B.A. programs than marketing executives from out-performing companies, which averaged growth 6.2% faster than their categories over the two years. Of executives from underperforming companies, 90% had M.B.A.s vs. 55% at outperforming companies.

Not all master’s degrees appear worthless in the study. Just M.B.A.s. About 10% of the marketing executives at the out-performers had master’s degrees other than M.B.A.s vs. none at underperformers.

My brother has said for years that his MBA offered little new knowledge incremental to his undergraduate business degree. There were just more group projects and somewhat more mature class discussions.  

I still believe that MBA's are best for people with non-business degrees who need to learn how to manage a business. Likewise, those of us with business degrees are probably better off pursuing a masters in a field other than business. 

Average New Home

The Week reported that the average new home is now 2,412 square feet, 50% more than in 1973. That sure doesn't help utility costs.

A Different Kind of Celebrity Worship

There's a book review of The God Factor in today's Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required). The book, written by Cathleen Falsani, is a series of interviews with 32 celebrities about their beliefs in God (or "god").

Only 10 of the 32 celebrities attend church regularly. That's less than the approximately 50% of the general population that attends. This isn't particularly alarming. Nevertheless, celebrity "spirituality" is so widely publicized now that it's not a stretch to believe that celebrities have a disproportionate influence on the beliefs of Americans.

The last few paragraphs and Ms. Falsani's response are excellent:

Former Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan likewise has problems with crucifixes. "I think there is a reason they're not obsessed with the cross that much on the Eastern side of the planet," he says, "because they have more of a group consciousness. And when you have a solo consciousness, like a lot of Westerners do, it is really about being on the cross. You're the one putting yourself up there."

It's an observation that closely -- and, one would guess, unwittingly -- recalls a line in G.K. Chesterton's Christian classic "Orthodoxy": "Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out." But Mr. Corgan elaborates with a thought that would have most likely made Chesterton choke on his cigar: "And I think the whole point is to try to figure out how to get off the [expletive] cross."

If that's Mr. Corgan's theology, it's not Christian in the sense of the Gospel according to Luke, where Jesus urged his followers to take up their cross daily, nor is it the Gospel according to Matthew: "He who endures to the end shall be saved." It is, however, the Gospel according to "Peanuts": "No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from."

Mr. Corgan clearly means well. Unlike many of the book's subjects, he readily admits that he is a seeker who has yet to find all the answers. But to a Christian (and I am one), downsizing the cross from the instrument of salvation to a symbol of aggravation reduces Jesus from the messiah who died for our sins to a nice guy who had a bad day. It was back in those days that the Roman celebrity Pontius Pilate famously asked, "What is truth?" To this day, many cultural icons don't have an answer -- and as "The God Factor" makes clear, few can even bring themselves to consider the question. 

I've long contended that today's problem is not that people don't know the answers; rather, it is that they so often fail to ask the questions -- or even know what questions ought to be asked. Thoughtful deliberation, prayer and debate lead to truth more often than ignorance does. Faith does not exist in a reasonless vacuum.

Mortgages

I just read this interesting tidbit on Ask Yahoo.

... According to a 2001 study by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), "nearly 40 percent of all residential properties in the United States, owner-occupied and rental units, are not mortgaged but are owned free and clear." For a country so often criticized for its debt, that's not a bad figure.

Despite that, this is also true:

Those who wish to learn more about the demographics of the average American homeowner (be it person or corporate entity) can skim the report's 368 pages of scintillating facts and figures. One factoid that stood out to us -- from 1991 to 2001, the amount of outstanding mortgage debt on single-unit properties rose from $1.62 trillion to $3.48 trillion.

It's really amazing when you figure that the $3.48 trillion is only financing 60% of the homes.

American Leisure

Pretty interesting coverage of a new article by Virginia Postrel in Reveries. She writes cool stuff that I should read more often.

The surprise is, Americans spend a lot more time — six whole weeks — on vacation today than they did in 1965, reports Virginia Postrel in The New York Times (2/23/06). It all depends on how you define “vacation” — because there is leisure time and there is leisure time. The difference between leisure and work is divided by that for which we might otherwise be paid (or pay someone else). Going to St. Lucia, for instance, qualifies as leisure because you probably wouldn’t pay someone else to do that for you. Cooking dinner, on the other hand, might be something you enjoy, but in theory you could just order take-out. So, the rise of microwave ovens and takeout dinners is one reason we aren’t “working” as much as we did in the past.

Based on that definition of leisure, economists Erik Hurst and Mark A. Aguiar have written a paper in which they calculate that “leisure had increased 5.1 hours a week, holding demographics like age constant. (Without that control, leisure has grown 4.6 hours). Assuming a 40-hour work week, that is like adding six weeks of vacation — an enormous increase.” That increase “is particularly striking for women … In 2003, women spent 11.1 fewer hours a week working at home than they did in 1965. The biggest drop, 6.2 hours a week, came in cooking and cleaning up after meals — not surprising, given the enormous growth in restaurant and takeout meals and the spread of microwave ovens. More women working outside the home created more demand for such conveniences, which, in turn, enabled more women to work outside the home.” As Dr. Hurst notes: “A women who was working full time in 1965 was also working full time at home, almost — 40 hours in the market, 20 or 25 hours at home.”

As for the men (the bums), well, here are the stats: "Ninety-seven percent of men ages 21 to 65 had jobs in 1965, compared with 87 percent in 2004. That drop accounts for about 60 percent of men’s increase in leisure time." In addition: "Low-educated men used to work a lot … Now they don’t work a lot," says Dr. Hurst. "If they’re unemployed, I would have expected them to do much more home production to offset the fact that they don’t have a salary." (There’s a reason they call people like Dr. Hurst "academics"). His research also finds that 40 year olds don’t work nearly as much as they did in 1965 and that "longer life spans mean more retirement years." Says Dr. Hurst: "It used to be that you worked till 65, and died at 66. Now you work till 65 and die at 80." Happy Monday. ~ Tim Manners, editor