AP Economics

Freakonomics - Chapter Five

This chapter helps to answer the age-old question; What makes a perfect parent? Once you have
read and carefully studied this chapter you should be able to complete the following tasks which,
taken together, answer this and related questions.
1. Why are parents more susceptible to fear-mongering than other people?
They are so susceptible because many have never raised a child before and are very worried about
doing something wrong that will result in later faults in their offspring. Parents see the stakes to
make the right decisions when raising kids as very high.
2. What market forces give rise to parenting books that appeal to a parents fears and
inadequacies rather than books which present an objective and evenhanded articulation of the
state-of-the science of good parenting?
The fact that only bold and radical parenting books will receive widespread media attention leads
authors to advocate more extreme measures instead of using an objective view.
3. How does the information in this chapter regarding the contradictory and confusing
assemblage of information from parenting experts support the major theme of this book (Hint:
incentives matter)?
It shows that because there is an incentive for experts to advocate extreme parenting techniques
these experts do exactly that and create an entire market that is very polarized.
4. When looking at statistical data over a period of time, what does correlation mean? How
is it different from causation?
Correlation means that when one variable increases, the other increases (or vice versa). This is
different from causation because correlation only means that two variables are somehow related.
Causation proves that a change in one variable results in a direct change in the other.
5. What tool does an economist use to make sense of data which include many variables? In
general terms, how does regression analysis sort out the data?
An economist uses regression analysis to hold other variables constant in a large data set while
allowing two to be manipulated. This allows the economist to study the effect of these two
variables on each other.
6. Describe, in general terms, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS)? Who conducted
it, who was the target of the study, and what was the purpose of the study?
This study was a project conducted by the US Department of Education to measure the academic
progress of students in grade school across the nation. With such a large set of data, economists
could work out many different relationships between variables, oftentimes reaching surprising
conclusions.
7. According to the data in this chapter, what are the main differences between a school
which overwhelmingly has black students versus a school which overwhelmingly has white
students?
The differences include an increase in gang problems, nonstudents loitering in front of the school,
and lack of PTA funding in schools that have overwhelmingly black students.

8. According to the data developed from the ECLS, what is more important regarding a
childs success on standardized tests: what a parent does for a child or what a parent is? In
your opinion, what might be an explanation for such a strange conclusion?
What a parent is matters more because many of these things will be passed on genetically to the
child and are not the result of specific actions of the parent.
9. According to the data developed from the ECLS, having lots of books in the home is
correlated with higher scores on a childs tests, reading to the child nearly every day is not.
If a parent were only interested in having his or her child achieve higher scores on
standardize tests, what would you imagine his or her benefit/cost considerations to be when it
came to the purchase of books and this use of his or her time?
I think this question would center on the fact that the parents are considering buying books for the
child in the first place. Since a parent who would shell out the money to educate his child is likely
to be more educated than one who wouldnt, the mere fact that he is thinking about buying these
books means that the child will score higher. With this said, this parent should probably think
about how many books he wants to buy and how much time he can commit to reading them. However,
since reading to a child, according to the controlled data, does not have any significant effect on
test scores, the parent does not need to necessarily invest his time to read these books.
10. According to the data developed from the ECLS, a low birth weight is correlated with
lower test scores on standardized tests, but the attendance by a child in the Head Start
program is not. If you were a government official with limited financial resources, how would
this inform your decisions regarding the allocation of government funds?
This would cause me lean towards using the funds to help educate others about the factors which
cause low birth weight children and hopefully prevent it from happening as often in the future.
Since the money spent on this crusade will actually have a significant effect on test scores, this
would be the worthy cause in this case.
AP Economics
Freakonomics - Chapter Six
This chapter raises a rather intriguing question, Whats in a name? Once you have read and
carefully studied this chapter you should be able to complete the following tasks which, taken
together, answer this and related questions.
1. What do the experiences of Winner Lane, Loser Lane, and Temptress tell us about the
likely relationship between a childs name and his/her prospects for success in life? Are these
examples sufficient for us to draw any definitive conclusions? Why or why not?
These examples show that a name is not a guarantee of any future prospects in life, and that they
should not be relied on to predict any problems or successes. These examples are not sufficient
because Winner and Loser both did the opposite of their names while Temptress lived out her
name.
2. Explain what Roland G. Fryer was trying to get at when he decided to explore the
following question: is distinctive black culture a cause of the economic disparity between blacks
and whites or merely a reflection of it?

The question hes trying to answer basically comes down to a chicken and the egg scenario. He
wants to know whether blacks have developed their own culture in the US as a result of economic
inequality or whether this inequality caused this unique culture to form in the first place.
3. Why is the California birth certificate data set so valuable from the economists
perspective? In particular, what type of data does it include that would be of interest to
economists? Why are the variables you listed so useful/valuable?
It is so valuable because it shows how differently black and white parents name their children. It
includes data such as name, gender, race, birthweight, parental marital status, zip code, means of
paying hospital bill, and parental level of education. These are so useful because they allow
economists to isolate trends in the data and compare racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to
naming patterns.
4. What do the California names data tell us about the similarity between the names black
parents and white parents gave their children up until the early 1970s and in the period of
time since then?
The data show that up until the 70s, black and white names were generally pretty similar but a wide
gap began after this period.
5. Summarize the degree of uniqueness of names given to black girls and black boys revealed
in the California names data. What do the authors cite as the most likely cause of this
phenomenon?
The data show that black names are very unique compared to those given to white babies. The
authors cite the Black Power movement and a desire of parents to act black and give their child a
distinctly black name so that they seem in accord with the surrounding community.
6. Summarize the characteristics of a black parent who is most likely to give his/her child a
distinctively black name.
Such a parent is likely an unmarried, low-income, undereducated teen mother from a black
neighborhood who has a distinctly black name herself.
7. Explain how an audit study is used to determine whether having a very white name or
a very black name matters.
These studies send identical resumes to employers and assign one a black name and the other a
white name. It has been shown that the white resumes bring in more interviews than black ones
even though the credentials are the same.
8. Are the results of audit studies regarding the effects of a persons name on that persons
prospects for success reliable? If not, why not?
No, they arent at all reliable because they cant measure the actual true life outcomes of white vs.
black sounding names (and people), they only show whether or not an interview is given.
9. According to the analysis of the California names data, does a person with a distinctively
black name have, on average, a worse life outcome than a person with a distinctively white
name? If so, is it the fault of the name? If not, explain what the data are telling us.
Yes, but this is not the fault of their names. The fact that they have a worse life outcome mainly
just stems from the fact that people with distinctly black names are more likely to be born into
lower socioeconomic status and therefore will not be as successful.

10. Is there a discernible pattern in how certain names move through the population over
time? If so, describe it.
Yes, the high-end names generally move down the line to become low-end names in a cycle.
11. Is a low-income parent more likely to choose the name of a celebrity or the child of an
upper-income family for his/her own child. Why?
They are more likely to copy the name of an upper-income family because celebrity names dont
have that much of an effect on popular names and low class families look towards the wealth of
others as a clue that by giving their children such a name, they can increase their chances of
success.
12. According to the California names data, what are many parents trying to signal when
they choose a particular name for their child?
They try to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be.