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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @05:45PM
Original poster here. What I meant with tautology of Pareto analysis is: whatever we do to "cure" the situation that it presents to us, it will still hold true that 20% of society will spend 80% of its common resources. If that was the problem, it will not go away. Whenever a metric is introduced and an ordered list created, it will have the top and the bottom. So, mentioning that in paper just makes one wonder about the line of thought of researchers.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:47PM
Ah, yeah, okay, that's completely and totally different from what I got from reading your post the first time. In which case: yeah. I can see that. If there's a Pareto distribution of something there's no reason to ever believe it's an unnatural phenomenon, or that any attempt at redress will change that distribution.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:28PM
Certainly there's a pseudo-tautological component to the existence of the Pareto principle, though confirming that that such a heuristic applies in any particular context is never tautological. Heuristics are just that - general principles with wide, but rarely universal, applicability.
Confirming the 80/20 rule applies though is only a first step - the next step, and where it starts becoming valuable, is in being able to identify and predict, the problematic 20% and direct resources accordingly. In computer programming for example a valuable rule of thumb is "don't optimize until performance profiling has identified the actual bottlenecks" - optimization is too resource intensive to waste on the 80%. On the other hand we also know that certain certain algorithms and problem types tend to be resource hogs, and have certain optimal solutions, so if you know your program is going to have to deal with those kinds of problems in performance-critical sections, you can choose data structures and high-level algorithms that will tend to minimize those problems and/or facilitate later optimization early in the design, dramatically reducing the amount of time and energy that will have to be spent on optimization later.
Similarly, assuming the validity of the study, they can now predict the most socially expensive 20% of the population, and that's the first step. If they can also figure out how to preemptively reduce those costs, perhaps through better tailored early childhood healthcare and education, then there stands to be dramatic social benefit. If you can spend twice as much on those kids early on in order to reduce their lifetime cost to society by half, you get a 40% reduction of the overall cost of social services.
That may not fundamentally change the 80/20 distribution, but it allows the government to deliver the same social benefit at 60% of the previous cost, allowing for a reduction of the tax burden and/or an increase in social benefits for everyone.
Of course it could also be abused as you suggest, but there's no reason to automatically assume it would be. Identifying the problem is always the best first step toward a solution, anything else amounts to just throwing money around and hoping something works. Ethically guiding the form of that solution is the collective responsibility of the society implementing it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @01:28PM
Ethically guiding the form of that solution is the collective responsibility of the society implementing it.
That is the crux of the issue. But it is contrary to idea of freedom to interfere without consent of those who are potential objects of such intervention, just on bases "we will have to pay for you". OTOH, It would imply also that there is possible circumstance of "you rejected our help when it was easier for us to give it, now screw you" which is also unethical.
So, as soon as we try to put the price tag on humanity and solidarity, we are bound to create suffering.
I can only conclude that due to human nature and due to nature of freedom, there are problems that should not be attempted to be optimized, because we lose either way. Just draw the line and accept that it is best we can do.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday December 16 2016, @10:01PM
Again, you are assuming any such solution would be imposed involuntarily. I would venture a guess that most parents, faced with an offer of "we would like to give your kid to have these additional benefits, which will very likely significantly improve their health and social situation later in life" would likely accept without coercion. At least assuming it didn't involve fostering them off or subjecting them to other dubiously ethical interventions. After all, those later-life social costs are almost certainly accompanied by substantial personal costs as well, monetary and otherwise.
As for your other points, sadly, placing a price tag on human life is an essential function of government - we could easily spend the entire GDP extending one person's life a few more days or months, but it's a completely wasteful use of limited resources. Similarly, every time a safety standard is established, it at least implicitly, and often explicitly, weighs the cost of implementing the standard against the number of deaths and injuries it is intended to prevent.
I would also be interested in hearing your reasoning when saying that it would be unethical for society to refuse to pay much greater costs to fix a problem that could have been fixed cheaply had you not willfully refused earlier interventions. I can easily agree in a case like this where your parents made the call on your behalf, but the logic seems much shakier to me if you yourself willfully chose to incur those much higher expenses. In that case it seems reasonable to argue that it is you who chose an unethical path (willfully incurring great expense for others), and refusing to bear that burden is a reasonable response.