Progress Daily

YouNotSneaky! points out (”How much of a jerk do you have to be to oppose immigration?“) that a low-skilled worker can make $9.34 an hour in America, compared with just $2.56 in Mexico. He assumes that migrants depress the wages of low-skilled Americans by 5% — a widely cited estimate. To justify opposing immigration, the blog concludes, you must attach at least 20 times more weight to the well being of a native-born American than to a Mexican.

Gordon Hanson points out (”The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigration” — .pdf file here) that since 1960 the share of native-born workers with less than a high-school diploma has fallen from 50% to 12%. Some 24% of farm workers, 17% of cleaners and 14% of construction workers are illegal aliens.

A study in the 1990s showed that a 10% drop in Mexican pay relative to US wages prompted a 6% increase in attempts to cross the border. Recently, a slowdown in remittances to Mexico and other Central American countries suggests the housing bust, and home-building slump, may have reduced the pace of illegal immigration.

“Guests v gatecrashers,” The Economist

Men with higher levels of serum testosterone (T) have lower-status occupations, as indicated by archival data from 4,462 military veterans in six U.S. census occupational groups. Higher T, mediated through lower intellectual ability, higher antisocial behavior, and lower education, leads away from white-collar occupations. T levels are heritable and available early enough to affect a number of paths leading to occupational achievement. Prior research has related testosterone to aggression in animals and men, and high levels of testosterone presumably evolved in association with dominance in individual and small-group settings. Ironically, T, which evolved in support of a primitive kind of status, now conflicts with the achievement of occupational status.

T has been associated with dominance (Mazur 1985), aggression (Bernstein, Rose & Gordon 1974; Rose 1978), antisocial behavior (Dabbs & Morris 1990), sensation seeking (Daitzman & Zuckerman 1980), automaticity and perseverant responding (Broverman et al. 1964; van Hest, van Haaren & van de Poll 1989), libido (Morris et al. 1987; Sherwin, Gelfand & Brender 1985), and low verbal intelligence.

“Testosterone and Occupational Achievement” by James M. Dabbs Jr.

A recent study suggests that marriage provides a greater psychological boost to depressed people than to happy people, even if the marriage is so-so.

Previous studies have suggested that the psychological perks of marriage depend upon marriage quality — a happy marriage gives rise to a happy couple, and vice versa.

Other studies have shown that depressed people, who tend to communicate poorly and require more caring and support than happy people, also end up in unhappier marriages.

Adrianne Frech and Kristi Williams looked at a sample of 3,066 men and women who had been interviewed and tested for depression once in either 1987 or 1988 and then again 5 years later. In the interviews, they were asked about the quality of their marriage (if they were married).

On average, controlling for differences in depression, subjects who had gotten married over the five-year span between the two interviews reported improved psychological well-being in the second interview — scoring an average of 3.4 points lower on the 84-point depression scale — than their counterparts who did not marry.

The depressed who married scored an average of 7.6 points lower on the depression scale than the depressed who did not marry, while those who were happy and got married scored only 1.9 points lower on the scale.

In other words, marriage provided a much bigger psychological boost to the depressed subjects than to the happy subjects.

“The depressed benefit more from a transition into marriage despite their having, on average, worse marital quality,” Frech noted.

“New Depression Rx,” by Melinda Wenner

Over the past two centuries, the distance traveled each day by the average person has grown by a factor of ten thousand. According to Nebojsa Nakicenovic (”Overland Transportation Networks”), an average person in 1800 traveled no more than about 50 meters each day. Many stayed within and around the home, or worked in the fields, and most of those who worked in the towns and cities lived there. There was little commuting back then. Nowadays we travel an average of 50 kilometers each day.

Nexus, by Mark Buchanan

Epicatechin — a chemical found in chocolate, tea, grapes and blueberries — can improve the memory of mice.

(Other studies claim that cardiovascular health can be improved by including “flavanol” chemicals in the diet.)

Dr Henriette van Praag compared mice fed a typical diet with those fed a diet supplemented with epicatechin.

Half the mice in each group were allowed to run on a wheel for two hours each day and then, a month later, were trained to find a platform hidden in a pool of water.

Those that both exercised and ate the epicatechin diet remembered the location of the platform longer than the other mice.

The epicatechin-fed mice who did not exercise also showed enhanced memory, but to a lesser degree.

The mice on the special diet appeared to have greater blood vessel growth in certain parts of their brain, alongside more mature brain nerve cells.

A spokesman for the British Nutrition Foundation said that while there was some evidence that diets rich in flavanols could be beneficial in humans, often when flavanols such as epicatechin were given on their own, no benefits could be spotted.

“Food chemical ‘may boost memory’,” BBC News