Causes of social problems

• e.g., Poverty--is it caused by a lack of formal education? Generational 'cultures?' Government policy that 'coddles' the marginally motivated? Lazy individuals? Single parenthood? Income and wealth inequality? Changes in the life course (i.e., age)? Larger economic forces (e.g., look at the trailer industry's decline and its effects on the local economy) leading to unemployment? Geography (e.g., inner city, Tribal reservations, Appalachia, Gulf Coast ...)? How would we know? Can we 'test' some hypotheses? How does the US compare with other countries?
• Divorce--we talked in class about 'proximate' causation--the things that families see as causes of divorce--differences in the family, new family members (children ...) creating more stresses, economic stresses, loss of a job or other calamity (health-related, for instance), abuse and domestic violence, infidelity, age (presuming those marriages starting younger are more likely to end in divorce), etc. But there are also bigger possible causes, of a more structural nature--the economy has changed, more people are in the workforce, two incomes in the household often isn't enough, where one was sufficient 50 years ago, there are cultural changes that make divorce more acceptable, some churches and religious institutions have softened their stances, popular media play a role in this as well. But divorce is often still stigmatized, and has created a 'feminization' of poverty, because women mostly end up with the children in single-parent households, struggling to make ends meet.
• The banking crisis--lots of factors precipitated this--people trying to borrow more money for a house than they could afford, people charging up too much on their credit cards, going for investment schemes that now seemed painfully too good to be true. But more structural causes might include financial institutions engaged in predatory lending practices taking advantage of a 'housing bubble' (artificial increase in the value of housing). High risk loans that weren't insured, creating a 'liquidity crisis' that industry insisted the Government needed to solve with cash (to the financial industry, not people losing their homes). A lack of regulation/oversight on the part of government, members of Congress relying on campaign donations from the financial services industry, courting lobbyists, and a corporate 'police force' (the Securities and Exchange Commission) essentially 'captured' by the industry it was supposed to regulate, investors in banks and other institutions looking at the short-term returns rather than the longer-term risks, financial analysts in the media whose salaries are paid by corporate advertisers benefiting from the economic investment 'boom' (that preceded the 'bust' ...), etc.

Complexity

Causes of social problems are often complex. Be wary of 'experts' promoting simple causes and simple solutions--see who's paying their salaries. And keep in mind, that in many cases, those causing the problems are benefiting in some way--they may not always be aware of it (e.g., how many of us think of increasing the likelihood of war in the Middle East when we're filling our gas tanks?), but then those are often the most difficult social problems to address.

Also, causation itself is a tricky thing. Just because two things are related (e.g., education and income), doesn't mean one necessarily causes the other. It's usually more complex. Consider this: 1) as people gain more formal education, they increase their lifetime income earning potential. 2) as people gain more formal education, their political views become more 'liberal.' In addition, as people age, 3) their politics become more 'liberal.' But, 4) as people earn more money, their views become more 'conservative' (in an effort, no doubt, to hold on to more of their money rather than pay higher taxes). Now these are all probabilistic statements--that means we're talking about the likelihood of things happening, and on average people are more likely to follow those trends above, but obviously not all people do--we can't make predictions about individuals, just averages within a population. So be wary of people who talk about causation as if it's simple cause-effect (e.g., check out this letter in the Observer--read 'Job's too big for Obama', try to figure out how he's badly distorting cause and effect, even without the several factual inaccuracies in the letter).