Cosby, footwear, and the state of social science
It's hard to believe, upon reading this shamefully simplistic post, that Alex Tabarrok is a tenured professor at a respected American university. Basically Tabarrok is trying to defend Bill Cosby from Michelle Singletary's charge that he's out of touch; in the process, he misunderstands not only Singletary's criticism, but also apparently Cosby's initial point, which was about the failures of parents, not the community as a whole.
Singletary never says that Cosby is wrong to claim that poor blacks spend too much on shoes. She makes the subtler point that Cosby's claim -- that people are out there spending $500 on a pair of sneakers -- shows how completely out of touch he is with the circumstances he's talking about. Tabarrok, however, takes this as some kind of statistic and heads straight for the consumer expenditure survey, where he finds that blacks, who earn less, spend more on shoes. QED.
But what does he really prove? Cosby's point is about poor choices in parenting, not the evils of shoes. And what, in any case, is wrong with buying shoes? Tabarrok makes no argument about parenting and doesn't bother to mention that his statistics don't provide any support whatsoever for Cosby's claim (since the entire difference in expenditure on shoes could well be explained by purchases among non-parents). Instead, he leaves us with the impression that black people are wrong (or stupid?) to be buying shoes when they have such limited resources.
Setting aside the racist overtones here, and looking -- as Tabarrok does -- beyond the nauseating discrepancy between black and non-black incomes, isn't it odd to see an economist drawing these kinds of conclusions about people based on the choices they make? After all, economics is built on the assumption that individual actors are rational. Is there some reason to suspend that assumption here?
economics is built on the assumption that individual actors are rational
Huh? I thought economics is built on the assumption that individual actors who make rational decisions are rewarded while those who make irrational ones are punished? Isn't that kind of Cosby and Tabarrok's point?
Also, while the numbers Tabarrok posted isn't conclusive support for Cosby's claim, it counts as some support, doesn't it? How do you explain the difference on footwear expenditures between the two groups? Do you think it's plausible that it can be entirely attributable to purchases among non-parents?
No, that's wrong -- economic thinking takes individuals to be rational and then builds models in the aggregate based on that assumption. Non-rational actors aren't generally accounted for (perhaps they're assumed to cancel out in the aggregate) except in some very current and controversial research that looks at psychological or even biological effects -- and that's not what Tabarrok was talking about here.
As far as whether this provides some support for Cosby, you have to look at what Cosby's claim was. It may or may not be true that black parents spend more on shoes than other parents (although I do think it's plausible that the entire discrepancy could be explained by young, affluent, single folks), but Cosby's point was more than this -- he was saying that black parents are bad parents because of this. Certainly Tabarrok's evidence doesn't provide any support for that assertion at all; instead it sounds like an "Aha!" moment that builds on racist a priori assumptions.
By the way, even if you could show that higher spending on shoes by parents means lower spending on education, or whatever else it is that black parents are supposed to be spending their money on, it still wouldn't be an economic argument against that spending. An economist would assume that the parents were acting rationally and seek a reason that spending pattern didn't look quite as she expected -- social forces, maybe? The conclusion that these people are just acting irrationally is both facile and racist.
I'm glad someone else picked up on the sloppiness of Tabarrok's reasoning. Actually, in addition to missing Singletary's point, he also selectively used the CEX data (and mis-used it at that).
For starters, Cosby cited black parents buying $500 pairs of sneakers. The data says that black households spend $440/year on footwear. But there are 2.6 persons in the consumer unit, hence the expenditures are $169/year per person. Well, and black households have 0.9 children under 18 vs. white households, which have just 0.6, so it seems very likely the the frequency of footwear purchases is necessarily higher for black households given growing feet. In any case, by the time you're done, it seems doubtful than many households (much less a typical poor household) are spending anywhere close to $500 on a pair of sneakers and the premium they're willing to pay for a pair of sneakers over a white household (although truly impossible to extrapolate from this data) is likely far less than the CEX data suggests on its face.
Of course, Cosby's larger point was related to consumer profligacy among poor blacks, and on that point the CEX data is even less helpful. Although blacks seem to have a (relative) penchant for footwear, they are more frugal than white households on almost every other 'discretionary' category of expenditures: compare the data on Entertainment, Food Away from Home, Household Furnishings, Alcohol and Tobacco. Even adjusting for the differences in after-tax income between the races, blacks are more circumspect in spending their money on non-necessities. I don't hear anyone raising a wail about whites inordinate expenditures on Pets, Toys & Playground Equipment ($421 vs. $123 for blacks) or New Cars and Trucks ($2,206 vs. $929).
Wow, could we be a little more left wing here? Tabarrok makes a solid point reflecting exactly upon what Cosby was talking about, and all anyone can do here is make vague retorts about his argument being too simplistic, or even racist.
Get it together, people. Simple data is accurate data: your average poor black family is making poor economic choices. End of story. If you can't figure that out then you're nothing more than a race apologist who can't face reality.
RFJason, I'm neither left wing nor a race apologist. Tabarrok didn't make a solid point--he made an inaccurate point. He misused data and drew an incorrect conclusion. If you can't grasp that you're an innumerate racist.
Note: I'm not saying that poor black families aren't making poor choices. I don't know if that's true or false. All I'm saying is that neither you nor Tabarrok have offered any data (simple or otherwise) to support that contention.
"Even adjusting for the differences in after-tax income between the races, blacks are more circumspect in spending their money on non-necessities. I don't hear anyone raising a wail about whites inordinate expenditures on Pets, Toys & Playground Equipment ($421 vs. $123 for blacks) or New Cars and Trucks ($2,206 vs. $929)."
Let's think about this for a moment. It's not quite inordinate, because whites tend to have higher levels of home ownership than blacks at comparable income levels. Playground equipment (if not pets, in some circumstances) usually tend to require living in a single-family dwelling, usually owned rather than rented. That, and there's a couple other categories on the CEX (Entertainment, Food Away from Home, Home Furnishings) that are either easier to access or more justifiable to spend on if you own a car and/or home.
I'm black and I agree with Cosby. Arguing over the exact dollar amounts is beyond ridiculous because it's pretty clear that Cosby was using hyperbole to get his point across, he wasn't claiming to cite an actual figure about exactly how much people pay for shoes. And it's also clear that Alex is not claiming these statistics definitively prove Cosby's claim, but you have to admit that the data is at least directionally correct (red herrings about toys and cars aside). Singletary and Dyson make flawed arguments in their criticism of Bill Cosby, most notably this quote from Dyson's book:
"It is interesting that Cosby expects poor parents, and youth, to be more fiscally responsible than those with far greater resources prove to be"
Uhh, yeah, those with fewer resources to spend SHOULD be more reponsible when it comes to discretionary spending. That this is not clear to Dyson shows me that he really does not want to or is incapable of rationally discussing Cosby's points.
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