Tag Archives: cause and effect

Searching for the one answer: social media use among young adults, injuries among baseball pitchers

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American society often likes one solution to solve an important problem. How many times do we hear that a particular political candidate or a specific product or a change to the educational system could change society for the better?

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

Two recent examples of this approach have popped up:

  1. Is social media use among young adults the reason for all sorts of social ills? If we could curb or regulate this use – or perhaps even allow no use – then all sorts of outcomes would improve.
  2. Why are so many baseball pitchers suffering major injuries? If we could find the single cause, more talented pitchers could continue to practice their craft.

Our world is complex. In many situations, multiple factors contribute to issues and multiple solutions could help address the issues. Studying the problem could reveal that some factors matter more than others or discussions about remediation could show that some solutions are easier to pursue or enact. Successfully intervening in the issue may help the situation – and not eliminate the issue entirely.

Actors in these two fields will continue to debate cause(s) and solution(s). There is much riding on these discussions and resulting actions.

Study: crime does not increase when people with housing vouchers move in

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A new study suggests people with housing vouchers moving into a neighborhood does not raise crime levels:

The study by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy found that housing vouchers don’t bring crime to an area. Rather, very low-income people using the vouchers often have limited options and tend to live in areas where crime already is high…

For its study, researchers looked at neighborhood-level data on voucher use and crime in the 10 cities, and whether the number of voucher holders in an area one year led to an increase in crime the following year. The study took into account differences between neighborhoods and other factors that might lead to an increase in crime in some areas.

Researchers found no evidence, even in poor neighborhoods, that an increase in voucher use directly led to more crime. But they did find something.

“If you do look at any given point in time, you do see a correlation, a weak one,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor and co-director Furman Center. “But what seems to be driving that correlation is that voucher (users) tend to rent in neighborhoods where crime is already occurring.”

This sounds like a classic case of reversing cause and effect. But, given the history of residential segregation in the United States, these perceptions aren’t surprising. Middle- and upper-class residents don’t generally want to live in neighborhoods with people with housing vouchers, perhaps due to a fear of reduced property values, perhaps due to race and ethnicity. Thus, this perception of housing voucher residents leading to more crime can serve the purpose of helping to keep class and race lines where they already are.