The Solution to Poverty is Both/And

I didn’t see his name on the program, but I wonder if the buzz among those attending the ecumenical and bipartisan-intended poverty summit held at Georgetown was regarding the new book edited and mostly written by Dr. Orlando Patterson at Harvard.

The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, published several weeks earlier is not for the casual reader, not only because it is a little pricey but because it is dense with data and scientific findings associated with poverty.

It should be required reading for anyone who is serious about this issue or who gives it news coverage or those who flippantly betray their cynicism.

But be sure to have a fresh highlighter ready.

Black himself, Patterson is what is called a historical and cultural historian.  He is one of those sociologists who having unwrapped the intricacies of poverty believes in a mix of structural and cultural solutions to poverty.

One of the unfortunate obstacles to eliminating poverty is that people in general have divided into two camps advocating for what have become stereotypical and simplistic avatars for not having to delve into more nuanced and integrated solutions.

On one side are “structuralists” who view the solutions to poverty around structural improvements to society such as jobs, housing, addressing institutional racism, and improved access to food, education and healthcare.

Lately, this is the camp that has been all about pointing the finger at law enforcement as the impediment.

On the other side are “culturalists” who have closed their minds to anything but improved values and rooting out learned behaviors and traditions.

This, I think, is what some people are trying to say when they use those judgmental fighting words - “a culture of poverty,” which is a perversion from what this description meant when coined in 1970.

Of course, as Patterson points out, there is no such thing. That doesn’t mean that unwrapping and eliminating poverty shouldn’t involve a deeper understanding of cultural as well as structural and social justice influences, though.

Moderates like me are probably capable of irritating both camps.

The well-intended but underfunded “War on Poverty” was structural in nature.  Conservative opposition dating to the Great Depression and earlier was given stereotypes to cling too during the 1980s by President Reagan’s non-existent, “Welfare Queen” have been a brittle form of culturalist by nature.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and several Presidents since - both Republican and Democrat - including Barack Obama have tried to weave together both structural and cultural solutions.

I read Dr. Patterson’s new book after reading a fascinating op-ed he penned in the New York Times just days before this month’s poverty summit convened at Georgetown.

Entitled, The Real Problem With America’s Inner Cities, it reminded me of when I first arrived in Durham to jumpstart community marketing here.  I was still inventorying the community when I was appointed to the board of the chamber of commerce.

Having heard some disparaging remarks both about Downtown and a blighted inner city neighborhood to the East, I invited a long-time Durham resident on a field trip.  It is an area planners have re-christened North East Central Durham by planners, although it is not really north or central, to distinguish it from those further east.

My counterpart who headed the chamber accepted my invitation to drive through both neighborhoods.  My point was to show him how bustling Downtown was at night in 1990 but to also disavow him of the impression that disadvantaged neighborhoods nearby were composed entirely of jobless poor people.

We drove down several streets with well maintained for homes and lawns.  Patterson points out twenty five years later that on average, 20 to 25 percent of residents of neighborhoods such as these are “solidly working class or working poor” who are for the most part conservative when it comes to values.

In his book, Patterson notes that another 25% of disadvantaged neighborhoods are comprised of people he classifies as “ghetto middle class,” though constantly exposed to what he calls the toxicity of a core “problem minority” that varies from 12 to 28 percent.

It is a small group, whose influence often reaches into surrounding middle class neighborhoods, spawning downward mobility among youth.

This ratio explains why in surveys more than 40% of people living in or near poverty cite a decline in the desire to work among their neighbors, a view consistent with the majority of Americans.

The remarkable advantage of the book Cultural Matrix is how Patterson and co-editor/contributor and doctoral student/researcher Ethan Fosse weave longitudinally the findings of hundreds and hundreds of studies, both quantitative and observational into a readable narrative.

There are also very practical tidbits in this extraordinary book.  For instance, those hoping to unwrap the opinions of the poorest of the poor may be misled when they espouse the importance of education and work.

This minority in the poorest minority poor neighborhoods can appear to resemble conservatives as most of them espouse values such as individual effort, personal responsibility, the American Dream and being a good parent.

They also similarly express and demonstrate negative views toward government, business and institutions (especially criminal justice,) even hip-hop.

Studies show that these normative values come from a vastly higher consumption overall of media including television and contrast greatly to a reality of “structural disconnection and cultural divergence” that results in even greater suffering.

We are all vulnerable to espousing values disconnected from our actions, regardless of where we fall on the ideological spectrum, especially it seems those who claim to be the most conservative.

It is just that our hypocrisy, but for the grace of God, does not result in our own suffering.

The Future of Wearables is More than Devices

In its February trends snapshot, Blueshift Research found that 40% of Americans made no change over the last six months when it came to living habits such as diet, exercise, sleep etc., up six points from a year ago.

The “no change” group is where I was over the last several decades despite periodically committing to do better.

Unfortunately, nearly 17% responded to the survey that their living habits had actually worsened, 3.1% significantly so over the six month span since this trend was last measured.

The good news is that during that same span 43% of us felt they had improved their living habits, 7% significantly.  A 2008 study calculated that “inactivity” costs the U.S. $76 billion in healthcare spending.

So I often wonder what finally made me shift gears 19 months ago after years of resolutions and wasted gym memberships.

Was it finally finding a spiritual connection while walking each morning?

Was it having a significant other to do that with, which has been expanded to include weight conditioning twice a week?

Was it using a fitness tracker and a linked app to track the caloric content of various foods I was eating?

Was it being confronted by a tiny belly roll when a portrait was hung to honor three of us just before I retired?

Was it that first sign of a film like build up in one of my carotid arteries?

Intrigued, I’ve been trying to reverse engineer what made me finally get serious.

It is not as though my doctor hadn’t been cautionary for several years about normalizing the level of triglycerides levels in my blood.

I always see the waiting room at the clinic where I get annual physicals full of people who are in much worse shape than I was and seemingly oblivious to the inappropriateness of yoga pants or having to lean over to see their shoes..

Medicare is now going to start holding doctors accountable for patient changes by calibrating what they are paid to outcomes.  But I am not sure how much more they can do to cajole each of us into accepting personal responsibility for our health.

Two years ago, a Pew Study found that 45% of U.S. adults are dealing with at least one chronic health condition but 7-in-10 overall keep track of a health indicator including 19% who have no chronic conditions.

But only a fifth use technological devices such as wearables with nearly half doing so only in their head.

Last year’s report by Endeavor Partners found that 1-in-10 adult Americans owned a fitness tracker, 1-in-4 between the ages of 25 and 34.  Unfortunately, more than half no longer use it and a third stopped using it within six months.

Key for sustainable use, according to the report, are 3 behavioral factors: habit formation, social motivation and goal reinforcement along with 6 other factors such as utility, design, fit, out of the box experience etc.

Fitbit, the one I have used since early 2010 when it came out, appeared to score highest overall among the eight different fitness “wearables” measured in the report.

Juniper Research projects that use of fitness devices and wearables will triple by 2018.  Some analysts project these devices will reach 48% market penetration worldwide by then.

A new Pew study shows that 64% of Americans now own Smartphones, double the proportion from just four years ago.  Smartphones have also rapidly become the means by which low income and disadvantaged Americans go online.

More than 60% of Smartphone owners use their phones to get health information, 57% to do online banking, 43% to look up job information and 30% to take a class or get educational content.

Making outdoor billboard advertising even more obsolete, more than 67% of smartphone owners use their phone for turn-by-turn navigation while driving, 32% do so frequently, compared to less than 1% of Americans who still rely on a billboard.

But wearables such as those for fitness and health are set to make “interruption” advertising such as billboards even more obsolete, according to PwC.

They will accelerate even faster the rapid transition to interest-based, content marketing but only when relevant and needed now.

Studies have shown that the three-decade decline in the effectiveness of traditional advertising has reached a negative return on investment overall.

Fitness and wellness apps are on track to more than sextuple by next year from what they were in 2010.  But a report issued last year by PwC shows plenty of reasons that businesses and organizations will soon get involved, too.

Already, 70% of consumers “say they would wear employer-provided wearable devices streaming anonymous data to a pool in exchange for a break on their insurance premiums” something that will obviously catch the attention of insurers in Obamacare exchanges.

The World Health Organization recommends that people get 30 active minutes a day.  A premium feature of the device I wear shows on a bell curve where I fall compared to men my age and weight as well as other demographics overall.

Telling is that at 30 “very” active minutes on average per day, I am in the 89th percentile for my group, or over 185% of the median. For many weeks I average over 40, over 300% of the median.

This means that, unfortunately, I am in the top 11% and regularly in the top 3%.

The center of that bell curve is only 6 “very” active minutes.  Even scarier is that I am 400% over the median for many of those people waiting in my doctor’s office.

People are nearly twice as likely to purchase and use fitness bands and smart watches if employers pay for them.  But the future of wearables goes beyond fitness.

More than half of the adults in the survey agree that automated facial recognition will replace the need to remember names, 56% say life expectancy will increase an average of 10 years and 46% believe wearables will decrease obesity.

But wearables, even for fitness, are rapidly moving beyond devices.  A report yesterday by KUED notedthat consumers are already moving to biometric clothing such as Hexoskin which report metrics beyond those done by devices.

Another by Athos is designed to help with weight and flexibility training.  Analysts project that sales of fitness device wearables will soon plateau or go down due to the overlap between smart wristbands and smart or sports watches.

But sales of smart garments such as Athos are projected to grow to 26 million units next year, up 2,600 times what they were in 2013 and more than two and a half times what they will be this year.

It will be interesting to see if they have a sustained impact on the overall health outcomes for Americans.

Really, Pretty Centrist

I am a self-described moderate but people who know me say I can sound “pretty liberal.”

But a core of regressives in our state legislature as well as in the U.S Congress make moderates and even true conservatives sound liberal.

In truth, I get exasperated with a tendency by some liberals to sound as though they are always trying to absolve groups and individuals of personal accountability.

An example is a story last week on New Republic by Dana Goldstein entitled, Inexcusable Absences about some truancy laws that hold parents accountable.

My concern as I read the recent DOJ report on the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, is that as a society we have an obsession now with institutional accountability.  That blinds us to an even more significant underlying problems in neighborhoods and homes.

In fact, there is ample evidence that even the problems of some individuals within institutions can be traced back to the homes and neighborhoods where they were raised.

But if you get “bleeding heart” beginning of Goldstein’s story, she makes several very valid data-driven points about how we can institutionally deal better deal with truancy institutionally, but few to enlighten societal interventions at home.

Okay, am I sounding moderate enough now?

I may have dismissed the article too soon had I not read Goldstein’s phenomenal book recently entitled The Teacher Wars, a well-written and documented overview of 175 years of American education.

It was particularly enlightening when read, as I did, in tandem with the just published revision of The Libertarian Mind written by David Boaz.  There is actually more agreement than people who only judge them by their titles might think.

This country was founded by liberals and libertarians who did not see those outlooks as incompatible.

The Teacher Wars illustrates just how old, tired and ineffective the polices are that are now being rehashed by regressives elected to high office across the country.  The far right still fails to grasp that we are not all born equal.

The book also illustrates how misguided teacher unions have been to shield unengaged teachers from consequences.

The Libertarian Mind brought to mind a friend I see on occasion frequenting a restaurant in our neighborhood.  Get him started and he will spend all the time you have and more explaining how the federal government is to blame for the collapses that brought about the Great Recession.

He has a point but fails to grasp that it is the free market that fails to incorporate the full cost of its actions into a fully sustainable cycle, instead pushing what are called negative externalities off onto society.

Taking responsibility for consequences is also a theme in The Libertarian Mind whose adherents would probably agree with the right of Michael Brown’s parents to sue the Ferguson Police Department as a rightful consequence.

But it is much more complex when consequences are enforced on poor parenting or neglectful neighbors and landlords or on personal behavior regardless of circumstances.

This is also an area today’s liberals avoid, seeming instead to absolve consequences by viewing personal responsibility through the lens of victims of circumstance such as objecting to work requirements for safety net benefits even though those were required when the nets were first erected, ironically by liberals.

Everything seems to revolve around that pesky little issue of free will.  Libertarians seem to reject any other influence and liberals often seem to sweep away free will altogether.

The sticky wicket seems to be what is blameworthy.

But none of us has been held entirely responsible for each of our actions so criminalizing poor or inadequate parenting may not ensure personal accountability either and certainly doesn’t seem fair or consistent with any of the world’s spiritual cultures.

Consequentialism and Communitarianism, are to me at the opposite ends of a spectrum, one seeming to view the world only through individual responsibility and the other viewing responsibility as a result of community interactions rather than personal behavior.

So there too, I find myself clinging as a centrist, though as I get older liberals probably see me as “pretty conservative” and my more conservative friends see me as “pretty liberal.”