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from the better-than-growing-up-to-be-a-sink dept.
Scientists at Kings College London performed a longitudinal study to test the 'Pareto principle' and found that adults who were greater users of public services were most likely to have had a low score on the intelligence and impulsivity test administered at age three.
"About 20 per cent of population is using the lion's share of a wide array of public services," said Prof Terrie Moffitt, of King's College and Duke University in North Carolina. "The same people use most of the NHS, the criminal courts, insurance claims, for disabling injury, pharmaceutical prescriptions and special welfare benefits.
"If we stopped there it might be fair to think these are lazy bums who are freeloading off the taxpayer and exploiting the public purse.
"But we also went further back into their childhood and found that 20 per cent begin their lives with mild problems with brain function and brain health when they were very small children.
"Looking at health examinations really changed the whole picture. It gives you a feeling of compassion for these people as opposed to a feeling of blame.
"Being able to predict which children will struggle is an opportunity to intervene in their lives very early to attempt to change their trajectories, for everyone's benefit and could bring big returns on investment for government."
Full Paper: Childhood forecasting of a small segment of the population with large economic burden DOI: 10.1038/s41562-016-0005
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Francis on Thursday December 15 2016, @03:34PM
This is more a reflection of how poorly we do at offering children a hand up. We're so obsessed with cutting out the handouts in order to deliver tax cuts to the greedy that children that young are already effectively being relegated to the rubbish pile.
Age 3 is extremely early to be making decisions about who is and isn't going to succeed. In fact, even the more standard 1st grade testing that we do around here is at least a few years too early.
If the government would fund a decent education system and the employers would just pay people what they've earned rather than the lowest possible rate after threatening to either offshore the jobs or bring in immigrants to do the work, this wouldn't be as much of an issue.
Look at the places where people on welfare work, Walmart has been one of the biggest offenders for decades. Walmart has had more than enough money to pay a living wage, but chooses to have taxpayers funding their employees via food stamps and medicaid, but it's the employees that are at fault, rather than the many employers that refuse to allow wages to rise with inflation.
Or to put it another way, if we'd spread the benefits out more widely so that parents have the resources to give their children the best shot, this situation would change as well. No longer would you be able to pin it down to 20% using 80% it would be more like 40% using 60% and what about the biggest leaches of them all, the wealthy? How much you want to bet they got gerrymandered out of the results?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:25PM
>Age 3 is extremely early to be making decisions about who is and isn't going to succeed.
In case of genetic disease, *conception* is when you can make such decisions with very high certainty. What makes you sure the root cause here is not some mild genetic defect?
And even barring that - the brain's ability to rewire itself degrades with age. It might just happen that by that age, certain kinds of defective wiring, acquired in whatever way, become unfixable - either without a dedicated effort, or at all. Nature has no justice and no compassion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @11:25PM
The 1930's called. They want their eugenics meme back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @07:44AM
If by your doctrine they must be wrong in every thing, then why don't you stop doing either, or both?
Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and Wernher von Braun is still the father of USA space program. Science is science, and nature forgot to make an exception for your ideology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @10:03PM
How any sane person can view the wealthy as somehow "deserving" a disproportionate share of society's resources I will never understand. Ok, that's a lie. I understand, millenia of war and struggle resulted in "strong men" to fight wars, and a natural corollary is the pyramid power structure of aristocracy. We've outgrown the need for one person to be "king" and call the shots, in fact we never really needed it in the first place and it has probably caused more problems than it solved. There are a multitude of other community structures that humans have successfully used.
As you said, the wealthy are the biggest leeches, That is the problem we need to solve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @04:48AM
The doctor who saved my life is indeed deserving the large amount of money he's received from both me and the medical system. For better or for worse, money is a great indicator of a person's value to society; even if an unproductive playboy is lucky enough to inherit wealth from a productive father, that that playboy's wealth will either diminish under his lack of productivity, or it will be placed into the control of productive money-making managers, who do make good profitable allocations of resources for the rest of society.
Money is awesome. It is the best indicator of worthiness in society, a role that money takes on best when allowed to exist in a completely Free Market.