OPINION: Genetics, the deserving and underserving poor

by Michael Lewis | Jun 20, 2011 | Opinion

By Michael A. Lewis, Associate Professor
The Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College

After spending 15 years teaching about, writing about, and observing the U.S. welfare state, I believe that the policies that make it up are based on a questionable assumption. In general, U.S. residents think that there are two kinds of people who receive social welfare benefits—those who deserve them and those who don’t. This is sometimes stated as a difference between the deserving and undeserving poor but it goes beyond poverty. The deserving are those who are in need through no fault of their own, while the undeserving are those who are in need because of “bad” decisions they have made. Perhaps they chose not to work enough, to have a child too early and/or outside of marriage, not to finish school, etc. The key to becoming a member of the deserving group is to be a working person, someone who has worked, or someone who is thought unable to work. Here “work” is used to mean someone working for a wage in the “above ground” economy. For those who distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving this is the only kind of work that counts. Taking care of one’s kids or other worthwhile things people can be doing instead of working for a wage simply don’t “cut it.”

Those who are working, have worked, or are unable to work, have the earned income tax credit, social security, and unemployment insurance. The most infamous program for the undeserving is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF but more commonly called “welfare”). TANF recipients are usually single non-working mothers and typically receive less than recipients of unemployment and social security. TANF recipients are also subjected to a work requirement in order to continue receiving benefits. This requirement means that they have to do some type of work in order to receive benefits. Those who don’t may have their benefits reduced or eliminated. It would be laughable for someone to propose that recipients of social security be required to work in return for their benefits. This is because, so the reasoning would go, they already worked for them back when they were “going to work every day” and “paying into the system.” Even though many in the U.S. seem wedded to the idea that there are deserving and undeserving recipients of social welfare benefits, I think this idea may be way too simplistic.

To see what I mean, consider the stereotypical “lazy” welfare mother. She is poor and needs “welfare” because she has chosen not to work and, because of this choice, doesn’t really deserve assistance. Perhaps we should support her for the sake of her children or simply to be “charitable” but, morally, she has no right to help. I think this view may be wrongheaded for reasons that will soon become clear.

As I understand it, geneticists believe that any observable trait that differs among people can be valid to study genetically, including behavioral traits. They also believe that complex observable traits result from a complicated interaction of genes with other genes and with the environment. They don’t claim to understand these interactions completely but think that what’s going on is that the effects of some genes depend on other genes as well as the environment and that the effect of the environment depends on genes.

As some readers may be aware, there is currently a controversial area of genetics called, behavioral genetics, that focuses on how genes and environment interact to affect behavior, including human behavior. Based on having read some of this work, I think that those working in this field regard human behaviors, such as the choices we make, as complex traits. If choices make up a pattern that some would call laziness, I think this laziness would be regarded as a complex trait too. The problem for the deserving/undeserving distinction is that people don’t choose their genes nor do they choose their environments, at least not completely. This is why it is such a complex process in learning how to analyze social behavior when you have to consider all of these different factors.

I’m the father of a young daughter, half of whose genes came from her mother and half from me, but this is not something she chose. All of her life we’ve chosen the environments she’s spent time in. Since she is still pretty young, this will still be the case for a few years to come. Even as she starts playing more of a role in deciding where she’ll spend her time, the interaction among her genes and between her genes and our earlier environmental choices for her may affect these “choices” too. What I’ve said about my daughter, of course, applies to all of us, whether we are “hard working” or “lazy”.

If genes and environment interact to affect human behaviors, including “laziness,” then the problem it raises for the deserving/undeserving distinction should be clear. In a sense the mother on welfare who has chosen not to work hasn’t really chosen not to work at all. She hasn’t chosen her genes, she hasn’t chosen much of her environment, and she hasn’t chosen how these interact to help create her “laziness.” So is it really fair to deny her the help she needs, on moral grounds, because she has “chosen” not work?

What I’m saying here might be troubling for several reasons. Some might think my argument is similar to the long held view that the average black is not as smart as the average white and that this difference is due, in part, to genetic differences between these two “races.” This is not the case at all. The racial difference in smartness argument is an argument about genes helping to explain differences between groups. What I’m saying is that interactions among genes and between genes and environment may explain differences within a group, where that group is the entire human race. To say that genes and environment interact to affect human behavior doesn’t mean that supposed differences between blacks and whites are partly due to racial differences in genes. An example should help make this clear.

Suppose that blacks and whites differ, on average, for a trait and that genes and environment interact to affect this trait. It’s logically possible for this to be true and for blacks and whites to have identical genes. This is because even though they have identical genes blacks and whites may, on average, have grown up in very different environments. The interaction of identical genes with different environments may be what explains the racial difference in the trait.

Others might be bothered by what I’m saying because they view the idea that human behavior may be influenced by genes as very suspicious. They might say that human behavior is caused mainly by social factors, especially oppressive ones. To this I would say that it is hard to read the work of geneticists and come away believing that genes play almost no role in influencing human behavior—there just seems to be too much evidence that suggests the possibility of such influence. Also, to say that genes may influence behavior is not to say that the environment, even an oppressive one, doesn’t. Remember that what I’m saying is that genes interact with the environment to influence our behaviors. Part of that environment may be racist, sexist, homophobic, neighborhoods ignored by investors and other powers that be, “crappy” schools, lacking in employment opportunities, etc. All I’m saying is that these kinds of environmental factors may interact with our genes to result in certain behaviors being more likely than others.

Still others might have problems with what I’m saying because they believe it means that people cannot be held accountable for their bad decisions. If people make such decisions because of their genes and environments and they have no control over these, how can we hold them responsible for their choices? I have to admit that this even troubles me, especially when one leaves social welfare policy and considers criminal justice. But if behaviors differ among human beings, if behaviors are examples of complex traits, if all such traits are influenced by genes and environment, and if we don’t completely choose our genes or environments then it’s very hard to see how we can fairly be held completely responsible for our “choices,” good or bad.

What does all this mean for social welfare policy? The main thing we should do is stop trying to make policy decisions based on who is deserving of help. Instead of trying to figure out if people are deserving of help we should simply try to figure what they need and how to provide it. If people need housing, how do we get them that? If they need food, how do we get them that? The question “do they need food or housing because they’ve made bad choices and don’t deserve help?” should be seen as irrelevant, since it is so hard to separate the choices they’ve made from the ones that were made for them. Yet we should be careful. Even as we focus less on whether people deserve help, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still care about incentives.

Incentives may be very important parts of our environments that interact with our genes and other parts of the environment to influence our behavior. Thus, whether a policy might result in people working less, spending a longer time looking for a job, family “break-up”, etc. could still be relevant questions to ask. The point is that these questions can be asked and policies based on our best guess answers to them can be proposed without blaming people for their bad choices. A policy that is “in the spirit” of what I have in mind is the basic income (BI).

BI is a proposal that for many would be a better way to deal with poverty than we do now, at least in the U.S. It would set a minimum income in the sense that no one’s income would be allowed to fall below that minimum, whether or not they worked. Those who did work would pay a tax on their earnings but the tax would be set so that those working would always have a net income higher than those who stayed home and lived only on the BI. If it were possible to get this minimum income high enough, poverty could be better dealt with and people would still have a clear incentive to work. Doing both of these things together is how BI considers the incentive to work without also withholding help from people in need because of their “bad” choices. I think that the more we can move toward policies like BI, the better off we’ll be. Such policies would allow us to go beyond the terribly outdated practice of trying to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Carole Schiffman, Steven Strogatz, Eri Noguchi, Jennifer Waldman-Green, Joel Blau, Mimi Abramovitz, and Yuko Kawanishi for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Credit picture: CC Gino Zahnd