The reported correlations between physical punishment and life outcomes, which underlie the headline $3.6 trillion / year figure, seem unlikely to be causal. I only clicked on the first study, but it made very little effort to control for any of the obvious confounders. (The two relevant controls are mother’s education and presence of the father.) The confounding is sufficiently obvious and large that the whole exercise seems kind of crazy. On top of that, as far as I can tell, a causal effect of this size would be inconsistent with adoption studies.
It would be natural to either start with the effect on kids’ welfare, which seems pretty easy to think about, or else make a much more serious effort to actually figure out the long-term effects.
SlateStarScratchpad claims (with more engagement here) that the literature mainly shows that parents who like hitting their kids or beat them severely do poorly, and that if you control for things like heredity or harsh beatings it’s not obvious that mild corporal punishment is more harmful than other common punishments.
My best guess is that children are very commonly abused (and not just by parents—also by schools), but I don’t think the line between physical and nonphysical punishments is all that helpful for understanding the true extent of this.
Scott links to this study, which is more convincing. They measure the difference between “physical mild (slap, spank)” and “physical harsh (use weapon, punch, kick)” punishment, with ~10% of children in the latter category. They consider children of twins to control for genetic confounders, and find something like a 0.2 SD effect on measures of behavioral problems at age 25. There is still confounding (e.g. households where parents beat their kids may be worse in other ways), and the effects are smaller and for rarer forms of punishment, but it is getting somewhere.
It’s my strong impression that parents are more likely to use harsh punishment when they themselves are more stressed and overwhelmed. I expect this to be a big confounder.
Thanks for this! Even within EA I think there’s a need for more brainstorming of different cause areas, and you’ve presented a well-researched case for this one. I am tentatively convinced!
What do you think is the best counterargument? That is, what’s the best reason to think that maybe this isn’t as tractable/neglected/important as you think?
I think the biggest concern (for me) is whether or not the research on the matter is solid. Does physical punishment cause worse outcomes, or does it merely correlate? Etc. This is important both for determining how serious the problem is, and for determining how tractable it is (because without research to back up our claims, it will be hard to convince anyone to change.) I haven’t looked into it myself of course, but I’m glad you have.
What do you think is the best counterargument? That is, what’s the best reason to think that maybe this isn’t as tractable/neglected/important as you think?
Studies didn’t much control confounders. Twin/adoption studies will be able to control genetic confounders, but there are still many confounders (adoptive parents’ education, SES, etc..)
I responded on the neglected number 11.: “”Correlation does not imply causation”: (1) difficult child may get physical punishment more; (2) physical punishment negatively correlates with parental education or socioeconomic status; (3) physical punishment strongly correlates with parental violentness (indeed, physical punishment itself is a paradigmatic example of parental violentness). However, randomized controlled trial to find harmfulness of physical punishment of children will be very unethical, and therefore, such research is not ethically possible. However, it seems prima facie true that physical punishment, especially on high frequency (3-18 times/week) will be profoundly harmful.”
So basically your argument for this being causal rather than merely correlational is just “it is prima facie plausible” ?
Whether or not this turns out to be a high-impact caiae area, I’d like to give some encouragement for doing and writing up such an exploratory cause analysis, I think this is high EV.
I do think indeed every physical punishment, however “mild” or “reasonable”, is child abuse
I think this claim is a bit problematic…
moral claim masquerading as factual via reification of moral categories (there is no objective fact of the matter about whether something is or is not child abuse)
supporting a deontological claim with consequentialist evidence of harm that (presumably) arises from only a subset the more extreme violations
never physically punishing children is a much less defensible, less persuasive position than doing so in a limited set of circumstances
I would like to understand more about why it is that children are punished physically. My impression is that it’s something that occurs in many different cultures and becomes less common as people become wealthier. These facts suggest to me that it’s not something parents want to do (because as they get richer, they stop doing it) but it has some kind of utility (because it’s done in so many different cultures).
For what it’s worth, I was punished physically as a child (more than is typical in the developed world, I think) and I’m pretty skeptical that this should be a top EA cause area, for various reasons. But it sounds like you don’t think anecdotes like these count for much.
The reported correlations between physical punishment and life outcomes, which underlie the headline $3.6 trillion / year figure, seem unlikely to be causal. I only clicked on the first study, but it made very little effort to control for any of the obvious confounders. (The two relevant controls are mother’s education and presence of the father.) The confounding is sufficiently obvious and large that the whole exercise seems kind of crazy. On top of that, as far as I can tell, a causal effect of this size would be inconsistent with adoption studies.
It would be natural to either start with the effect on kids’ welfare, which seems pretty easy to think about, or else make a much more serious effort to actually figure out the long-term effects.
SlateStarScratchpad claims (with more engagement here) that the literature mainly shows that parents who like hitting their kids or beat them severely do poorly, and that if you control for things like heredity or harsh beatings it’s not obvious that mild corporal punishment is more harmful than other common punishments.
My best guess is that children are very commonly abused (and not just by parents—also by schools), but I don’t think the line between physical and nonphysical punishments is all that helpful for understanding the true extent of this.
Scott links to this study, which is more convincing. They measure the difference between “physical mild (slap, spank)” and “physical harsh (use weapon, punch, kick)” punishment, with ~10% of children in the latter category. They consider children of twins to control for genetic confounders, and find something like a 0.2 SD effect on measures of behavioral problems at age 25. There is still confounding (e.g. households where parents beat their kids may be worse in other ways), and the effects are smaller and for rarer forms of punishment, but it is getting somewhere.
It’s my strong impression that parents are more likely to use harsh punishment when they themselves are more stressed and overwhelmed. I expect this to be a big confounder.
Thanks for this! Even within EA I think there’s a need for more brainstorming of different cause areas, and you’ve presented a well-researched case for this one. I am tentatively convinced!
What do you think is the best counterargument? That is, what’s the best reason to think that maybe this isn’t as tractable/neglected/important as you think?
I think the biggest concern (for me) is whether or not the research on the matter is solid. Does physical punishment cause worse outcomes, or does it merely correlate? Etc. This is important both for determining how serious the problem is, and for determining how tractable it is (because without research to back up our claims, it will be hard to convince anyone to change.) I haven’t looked into it myself of course, but I’m glad you have.
Studies didn’t much control confounders. Twin/adoption studies will be able to control genetic confounders, but there are still many confounders (adoptive parents’ education, SES, etc..)
So basically your argument for this being causal rather than merely correlational is just “it is prima facie plausible” ?
Whether or not this turns out to be a high-impact caiae area, I’d like to give some encouragement for doing and writing up such an exploratory cause analysis, I think this is high EV.
I think this claim is a bit problematic…
moral claim masquerading as factual via reification of moral categories (there is no objective fact of the matter about whether something is or is not child abuse)
supporting a deontological claim with consequentialist evidence of harm that (presumably) arises from only a subset the more extreme violations
never physically punishing children is a much less defensible, less persuasive position than doing so in a limited set of circumstances
I would like to understand more about why it is that children are punished physically. My impression is that it’s something that occurs in many different cultures and becomes less common as people become wealthier. These facts suggest to me that it’s not something parents want to do (because as they get richer, they stop doing it) but it has some kind of utility (because it’s done in so many different cultures).
For what it’s worth, I was punished physically as a child (more than is typical in the developed world, I think) and I’m pretty skeptical that this should be a top EA cause area, for various reasons. But it sounds like you don’t think anecdotes like these count for much.