freakonomics

“The Peter Sandman Risk Communication Web Site” at http://
www.psandman.com/index.htm.
HOW MUCH DO PARENTS REALLY MATTER? See Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture
Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (New York: Free Press, 1998);
for a Harris profile that also provides an excellent review of the nature-nurture debate,
see Malcolm Gladwell, “Do Parents Matter?” The New Yorker, August 17, 1998; and
Carol Tavris, “Peer Pressure,” New York Times Book Review, September 13, 1998. /
155 “‘Here we go again’”: See Tavris, New York Times. / 155 Pinker called Harris’s
views “mind-boggling”: Steven Pinker, “Sibling Rivalry: Why the Nature/Nurture Debate
Won’t Go Away,” Boston Globe, October 13, 2002, adapted from Steven Pinker, The
Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002).
SCHOOL CHOICE IN CHICAGO: This material is drawn from Julie Berry Cullen,
Brian Jacob, and Steven D. Levitt, “The Impact of School Choice on Student Outcomes:
An Analysis of the Chicago Public Schools,” Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming;
and Julie Berry Cullen, Brian Jacob, and Steven D. Levitt, “The Effect of School Choice
on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries,” National Bureau of
Economic Research working paper, 2003.
STUDENTS WHO ARRIVE AT HIGH SCHOOL NOT PREPARED TO DO HIGH
SCHOOL WORK: See Tamar Lewin, “More Students Passing Regents, but Achievement
Gap Persists,” New York Times, March 18, 2004.
THE BLACK-WHITE INCOME GAP TRACED TO EIGHTH-GRADE TEST SCORE
GAP: See Derek Neal and William R. Johnson, “The Role of Pre-Market Factors in
Black-White Wage Differences,” Journal of Political Economy 104 (1996), pp. 869–95;
and June O’Neill, “The Role of Human Capital in Earnings Differences Between Black
and White Men,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 4, no. 4 (1990), pp. 25–46. / 160
“Reducing the black-white test score gap”: See Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips,
“America’s Next Achievement Test: Closing the Black-White Test Score Gap,”
American Prospect 40 (September–October 1998), pp. 44–53.
160 “ACTING WHITE”: See David Austen-Smith and Roland G. Fryer Jr., “The
Economics of ‘Acting White,’” National Bureau of Economic Research working paper,
2003. / 160 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Peter Knobler, Giant Steps
(New York: Bantam, 1983), p. 16.
THE BLACK-WHITE TEST SCORE GAP AND THE ECLS: This material was drawn
from Roland G. Fryer Jr. and Steven D. Levitt, “Understanding the Black-White Test
Score Gap in the First Two Years of School,” The Review of Economics and Statistics
86, no. 2 (2004), pp. 447–464. While this paper contains little discussion of the
correlation between test scores and home-based factors (television viewing, spanking,
etc.), a regression of those data is included in the paper’s appendix. Regarding the ECLS
study itself: as of this writing, an overview of the study was posted at nces.ed.gov/ecls/.