The Welfare Trait

by Adam Perkins

  The Abecedarian Project was designed to assess the benefits of a high-quality preschool tutoring programme starting at an earlier stage and lasting longer than the intervention delivered by previous studies such as the Perry Preschool Project. Like the Perry Preschool Project, the participants were children from low-income families and at high risk of school failure, but unlike the Perry Preschool Project, participants were typically enrolled within four months of birth and received the preschool teaching programme until five years of age. Running in North Carolina, the Abecedarian Project enrolled 111 participants between 1972 and 1977 and had good rates of retention, with 104 of the infants originally enrolled remaining in contact with the study administrators until 21 years old. Potential participants had been identified on the basis of 13 socio-demographic risk factors such as coming from an impoverished background, having an absent father and the mothers typically being around 20 years old, unmarried, poorly educated and unemployed. Participants were paired according to their scores on the 13 risk factors and then randomly assigned to the experimental group or the control group. In total, 57 infants were in the preschool experimental-intervention group (29 boys, 28 girls) and 54 infants (23 boys, 31 girls) were assigned to the control group.

  The preschool intervention consisted of a broad spectrum of educational games designed to accelerate language, cognitive, motor and social-emotional development. These started with basic adult–child interactions of the type that a normal mother would undertake without requiring government intervention, such as talking to the child, playfully showing them objects or pictures and allowing them to explore and react to the environment. The interventions then became more advanced as the child grew, increasingly targeting the development of language, conceptual and social skills. At all times, the programme was designed to give the child freedom to explore and express their individuality.

  At the end of the preschool programme, cognitive test scores at 48 months were then used to pair each participant from the experimental group with a matching participant from the control group. Half the matched pairs were then assigned to receive further interventions in the first three years of primary school whilst the other half received no further intervention. This step created four final experimental groups: EE (participants who received preschool + primary school interventions), EC (participants with preschool intervention only), CE (participants who received primary school intervention only) and CC (participants who received no interventions). The participants who were allocated to receive primary school interventions were assigned a home-school resource teacher (HST) who liaised between the school and family and served to increase family involvement with the child’s schooling. To assist this process, every two weeks, each participant received a curriculum pack prepared to match the child’s individual learning needs, as assessed by the classroom teacher. Parents were encouraged to use this pack for 15 minutes a day.

  Results of the Abecedarian Project participants at the age of 21 are broadly similar to those of the Perry Preschool Project, except that criminality was not reduced in the Abecedarian preschool group and a small IQ gain persisted in adulthood for the Abecedarian participants who received the preschool programme, possibly because the Abecedarian intervention started within a few months of birth and lasted twice as long as the Perry Preschool Project, giving it a greater opportunity to improve the brain development of the child. More specifically, the Abecedarian participants who received the preschool programme completed significantly more years of education than controls and showed better maths and reading skills. They also were significantly more likely than controls to have a skilled job. With regard to parenthood, the participants who had received the preschool programme were significantly less likely than controls to become teenage parents and even within the group of preschool programme women who had given birth by the age of 21, significantly fewer reported second or third births.

  Interestingly, the preschool programme also benefited the parents of the participants, with teenage mothers of participants assigned to the experimental group making significantly better educational and employment progress than teenage mothers of control-group participants. Marijuana and cigarette smoking was significantly lower in the treated group of participants. Results suggested the school-age treatment programme helped to preserve the effects of the preschool-age programme, but the school-age effects were generally not as strong, suggesting that interventions aimed at boosting life outcomes in disadvantaged children are best implemented before the age of five, and preferably from birth (Campbell et al., 2002).

  Cost–benefit analyses of the Abecedarian Project show that for every dollar spent on childcare approximately $4 was saved in later expenditure by the time the participants got to the age of 21. This is substantially smaller than the level of savings estimated for the Perry Preschool Project ($16 saved per dollar spent), but it should be noted that the full benefits for that study only emerged by the age of 40. When Perry Preschool participants were followed up at the age of 27, similar to the age of follow-up for the Abecedarian Project, the Perry Preschool Project saved a much more modest $7 for every dollar spent. Also, it should be noted that the Abecedarian Project implemented childcare from birth to five years, a longer and more costly intervention than the Perry Preschool Project.

  The Abecedarian participants have most recently been followed up at the age of 30, demonstrating excellent retention (of the 111 participants who were originally enrolled as babies, 101 remained at the age 30 follow-up) and revealing that the benefits of the intervention are still persisting. For example, the treated participants on average completed a year more of education than the control participants and were four times more likely than the untreated participants to have earned a college degree by the age of 30. Furthermore, 75 per cent of the treated participants were in full-time employment, compared to 53 per cent of the untreated participants. Similarly, in the 89-month time window during which comparisons were made for the age 30 follow-up, the untreated participants were over six times more likely to claim welfare than the treated group were (Campbell et al., 2012).

  More recently, researchers assessed the health of Abecedarian participants at the age of 30. This revealed that treated participants (particularly males) have significantly lower risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. For example, on average, the systolic blood pressure in untreated males was 143 mmHg, compared to an average of 126 mmHg in the treated males. Furthermore, approximately 25 per cent of the untreated males suffered from metabolic syndrome, compared to none of the treated males (Campbell et al., 2014). The methodology of this study was unable to determine conclusively the mechanism by which preschool tutoring caused these later health differences, but the authors suggested that, as in the Perry Preschool Project, the Abcedarian interventions may have improved personality characteristics which then improved health-related behaviours.

  Project CARE

  The Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (also known as Project CARE) aimed to build on the Abecedarian Project by comparing outcomes for three different experimental groups: the control group (no intervention), family group (weekly home visits only) and the family plus centre group (weekly home visits plus daily centre-based childcare). In most other respects, Project CARE closely replicated the study design of the Abecedarian Project. Prospective participants were selected using the same high-risk index and the background variables such as family environment and geographical location were the same. The interventions given to the children were also very similar to those in the Abecedarian Project, including the continuation of treatment after the children began attending primary school.

  Participants in Project CARE were born between 1978 and 1980. A total of 66 infants were enrolled, with 16 assigned randomly to the control group, 27 to the family group and 23 to the family plus centre group. As with the Abecedarian Project, retention was high, with 60 of the 66 participants being followed up in adulthood, at an average age of 22.5 years. The life outcome fol
low-up measures used on Project CARE were similar to those in the Abecedarian Project, but abbreviated. The participants were not tested on psychological attributes such as IQ but were thoroughly assessed with regard to important biographical variables such as educational achievement, employment history, parenthood, marriage and criminality.

  With regard to education and employment, the Project CARE results showed the centre-based intervention was successful and in close agreement with the Abecedarian findings: compared to controls, participants who had received the experimental treatment were seven times more likely to be in some form of educational programme at the time of follow-up. The experimental group were almost twice as likely to be in skilled employment compared to the control group. Importantly, these benefits only applied to the participants who had received weekly home visits plus daily centre-based childcare. The participants who received only the weekly home visits showed no meaningful differences to the control group, suggesting that daily intensive teaching out of the home is required to offset the negative effects on education and employment of being born into a disadvantaged family.

  Insufficient numbers of the CARE participants had got married or had children to provide any meaningful results on that topic, which is unsurprising considering they were 22 years old at time of survey. For health and social adjustment measures, the CARE participants who received the centre-based intervention were four times more likely to report an active lifestyle (for example, sports participation) than the control participants were. In contrast to the Abecedarian results, the experimental group of CARE participants smoked more than the control group did. Also there were no significant differences between the groups on law-breaking and also there was no effect of the experimental programme. Effects on life outcomes in Project CARE of the treatment programme after participants attended primary school were minimal, as was also found in the Abecedarian Project. Overall, therefore, the results of Project CARE suggest (a) that special centre-based treatment for disadvantaged children ideally needs to happen from birth until primary school and that interventions later in life are not nearly as effective; and (b) Project CARE confirms the Abecedarian finding that the key benefits of early childhood intervention are in making children more effective in education and in the workplace (Campbell et al., 2008).

  The Chicago Longitudinal Study

  The Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS) began in 1986 to evaluate the effectiveness of the Chicago Child–Parent Center (CPC) programme, one of the longest running initiatives in the USA intended to boost preschool learning of disadvantaged children. This programme offered preschool teaching for three-year-olds or four-year-olds, beginning in 1967 with four centres and expanding to include some 25 centres to date. The CLS was notable in having far larger sample sizes than previous studies and for using a non-randomised cohort study design: in total, 1,539 participants were enrolled, with 989 completing CPC preschool and kindergarten and 550 children receiving kindergarten only. For the school-age part of the study, 850 children who had participated in the extended (school-age) intervention were compared to those who had non-extended intervention (689), irrespective of whether or not they had received preschool teaching.

  The CLS results for the 15-year follow-up showed that participants who received preschool intervention had a significantly higher rate of high-school completion than control participants (49.7 per cent versus 38.5 per cent) and a lower rate of school dropout (46.7 per cent versus 55.0 per cent). Participating in the extended programme made no significant difference to later educational attainment. Participants who received preschool intervention had a significantly lower arrest rate than controls did (16.9 per cent versus 25.1 per cent). Participation in the extended programme had no significant effect on criminality. However, participants in the extended childhood-intervention program had lower rates of special education enrolment (13.5 per cent versus 20.7 per cent) and grade retention (21.9 versus 32.3 per cent) by their late teenage years (Reynolds et al., 2001).

  The Montreal Longitudinal Experimental Study

  The Montreal Longitudinal Experimental Study began in 1984 with the aim of assessing the impact on life outcome of an intervention programme during kindergarten (Boisjoli et al., 2007). At six years of age, 895 boys from 53 kindergarten schools in impoverished areas of Montreal were rated by their teachers on a social behaviour questionnaire, which included a measure of disruptiveness. The boys who scored above the 70th percentile on disruptiveness (250 boys in total) were assigned randomly to one of three groups: prevention (69 boys), attention-control (123 boys) and control (58 boys). The remaining 645 boys served as the low-risk group. The boys in the prevention group received training in social skills for two years (46 participated) from the age of seven to nine. Training took place at school in groups of four to seven children with a ratio of one disruptive boy to three pro-social children. The parents of the boys were also trained in effective child-rearing and the teachers received information and support concerning how to work with at-risk children.

  The boys were followed up 15 years later, revealing that the social skills training intervention reduced criminality and increased academic performance. In both cases, the treated at-risk boys were closer to the low-risk boys, relative to the at-risk boys who were not trained. For example, 32.6 per cent of the untreated at-risk group (59 boys) had a criminal record, compared to 21.7 per cent of the treated at-risk group (15 boys) and 16.1 per cent of the low-risk boys (104 boys). Similarly, 32.2 per cent of the untreated at-risk group (56 boys) graduated from high school, compared to 45.6 per cent of the treated at-risk group (31 boys) and 53.4 per cent of the low-risk boys (340 boys).

  Conclusion

  Child neglect is the active ingredient in the environmental transmission of the employment-resistant personality profile from parents to children. This takes the form of a trans-generational cycle of neglect, since child neglect not only increases risk of personality mis-development, but also makes the victim more likely to perpetrate child neglect when they are a parent themselves.

  6

  Genetic Influences on Personality

  This chapter summarises evidence for the genetic transmission of personality characteristics from parents to offspring. This topic might seem like a matter for debate or even controversy, but it isn’t: long before the advent of behaviour genetics as a scientific discipline, farmers used selective breeding to mould the psychological as well as anatomical characteristics of their livestock. For example, sheep are docile and passive farm animals yet the wild sheep from which they are descended are feisty creatures. This change in sheep personality is not the result of education, but instead has been achieved by centuries of selective breeding for docility.

  Charles Darwin’s rural background no doubt gave him a head start when it came to understanding the power of selective breeding to alter psychological characteristics. He was certainly aware of it, as demonstrated by this bold statement in the final chapter of the Origin of Species: ‘Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation’ (Darwin, 1859, p. 458). I say this was a bold statement because psychology barely existed as a scientific discipline at the time and, indeed, the first psychological laboratory was not set up until 20 years later (by Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig University, in 1879).

  The theoretical framework for this chapter is therefore a well-known one, namely evolution by natural selection. It has been called ‘the single best idea anyone has ever had’ (Dennett, 1996, p. 21) and more words have probably been written about it than any other scientific theory. This might give the impression that it is difficult to understand. It isn’t. As I intimated above, natural selection is just like selective breeding for docility by farmers, except that instead of a farmer selecting which animals get to pass on their genes, it is the environment in the broadest sense of the word (such as climate, other organisms and geological factors).

  The twist on the theme of natural selection in this bo
ok is that the environmental change in question is the advent of welfare legislation which serves to boost the number of children born to claimants. Since we have already seen that the employment-resistant personality profile is over-represented amongst welfare claimants (for example, Vaughn et al., 2010), we can accept that the genes for employment resistance will also be over-represented amongst them. This suggests the genes in question could be proliferated by a welfare state, such as that in the UK, which can cause claimants on average to have more children than employed citizens (see Table 4.1). As I argue that welfare legislation is the driving force in the evolution of personality towards greater employment-resistance, we could dub the process ‘legislative selection’ rather than natural selection, but it means the same thing. Whatever its label, the idea of genetically-based, welfare-induced personality mis-development is not mine: it was first proposed by the eminent biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

  This brilliant book is deservedly famous for setting out the gene’s eye view of natural selection, but it also contains a concise evolutionary analysis of the personality-changing effects of the welfare state:

  Individuals who have too many children are penalized, not because the whole population goes extinct, but simply because fewer of their children survive. Genes for having too many children are just not passed on to the next generation in large numbers, because few of the children bearing these genes reach adulthood. What has happened in modern civilized man is that family sizes are no longer limited by the finite resources that the individual parents can provide. If a husband and wife have more children than they can feed, the state, which means the rest of the population, simply steps in and keeps the surplus children alive and healthy. There is, in fact, nothing to stop a couple with no material resources at all having and rearing precisely as many children as the woman can physically bear. But the welfare state is a very unnatural thing. In nature, parents who have more children than they can support do not have many grandchildren, and their genes are not passed on to future generations. There is no need for altruistic restraint in the birth-rate, because there is no welfare state in nature. Any gene for overindulgence is promptly punished: the children containing that gene starve. Since we humans do not want to return to the old selfish ways where we let the children of too-large families starve to death, we have abolished the family as a unit of economic self-sufficiency, and substituted the state. But the privilege of guaranteed support for children should not be abused.