Adverse effects of sustained (not moderate) stress
1. Easier to learn fear and harder to unlearn fear
2. Emotionally salient information is processed with less accuracy
3. It impairs working memory, impulse control, executive decision making, risk assessment, and task shifting
4. We become less empathetic and less prosocial
5. The frontal cortex has less control over the amygdala which results in an overactive amygdala

For adolescents "emotional intelligence" and "social intelligence" predict adult success and happiness better than do IQ tests or SAT scores. It's all about social memory, emotional perspective taking, impulse control, empathy, ability to work with others, and self-regulation.

Abortion

Legalization of abortion reduces crime rates: a state by state analysis of the liberalization of abortion laws and the demographics of the crime drop showed that when abortions become readily available in an area, rates of crime by young adults decline about 20 years later. What majorly predicts a life of crime? Being born to a mother who, if she could, would have chosen that you not be. What's the most basic thing provided by a mother? Knowing that she is happy that you exist.

Childhood adversity including paternal deprivation; childhood poverty; observing violence; exposure to violence or natural disasters; and exposure to domestic violence, increases the odds of adults having:
1. Depression, anxiety and/or substance abuse
2. Impaired cognitive capabilities
3. Impaired impulse control
4. Impaired emotional regulation
5. Antisocial behavior, including violence
6. Relationships that replicate the adversities of childhood (e.g., staying with an abusive partner)
7. Impaired learning
8. Impaired memory

Kids witnessing violence on TV, in movies, in the news, in music videos, in violent video games, increases their odds of aggression soon after, and predicts higher levels of aggression in young adults. The more category of adversities a child suffers, the dimmer his or her chances of a happy functional adulthood.

The opposite of "play" is not "work" it's depression.

Stimulating environments, harsh parents, good neighborhoods, uninspiring teachers, optimal diets--all alter genes in the brain

Childhood adversity can make for damaged and damaging adults. And it hints at how bad outcomes might be reversed and good outcomes reinforced.

Immigration

Currenly, 12% of Americans are immigrants, another 12% are children of immigrants, 1% are pure Native Americans, and everyone else descend from people who emigrated within the last 500 years.

Income Inequality

Social capital is the collective quantity of resources such as trust, reciprocity and cooperation in a community. There are two questions that test social capital:
1. Can people in the community usually be trusted?
2. How many organizations in the community does someone participate in?

Cultures with more income inequality have less social capital. Hierarchy is about domination. You can't have a society with both dramatic income inequality and plentiful social capital. Income inequality makes people crummier to one another. High inequality/low social capital predict high rates of bullying and of antisocial punishment and it makes people less kind (antisocial punishment is punishing people for being overly generous because they make everyone else look bad and they increase the expectation of generosity from everyone else).

People at the top of unequal societies generate justifications for their status. And the more income inequality, the more the powerful adhere to myths about the hidden blessings of subordination--"They may be poor, but at least they're happy/honest/loved."

When times are tough the unequal access to wealth becomes the unequal distribution of misery and death.

The poorer you are, the worse your health, the higher the incidence and impact of numerous diseases, and the shorter your life expectancy. It's not so much being poor that predicts poor health, it's feeling poor--someone's subjective socioeconomic status. It's poverty amid plenty--income inequality.

If you want to improve health and quality of life for the average person in a society, you spend money on public goods--better public transit, safer streets, cleaner water, better public schools, universal heathcare. But the more income inequality, the greater the financial distance between the wealthy and the average and thus the less direct benefit the wealthy feel from improving public goods. Instead they benefit more from dodging taxes and spending on their private good--a chauffeur, a gated community, bottled water, private schools, private health insurance. The more unequal are incomes in a society, the more pronounced will be the disadvantages to its better-off members from public expenditure, and the more resources will those members have available to them to mount effective political opposition (e.g., lobbying to promote private affluence and public squalor).

The inequality/health link paves the way for understanding how inequality also makes for more crime and violence. Poverty is not a predictor of crime as much as poverty amid plenty is. The extent of income inequality is a major predictor of rates of violent crime across American states and across industrialized nations. Income inequality means less social capital, less trust, cooperation, and people watching out for one another. Inequality means more secession of the wealthy from contributing to the public good. States with more income inequality spend proportionately less money on that key crime-fighting tool, education.

A rat being shocked activates a stress response (glucocorticoid secretion). But a rat being shocked who can then bite the hell out of another rat has less of a stress response. If you are a low ranking baboon, a reliable way to reduce glucocorticoid secretion is to displace aggression onto those even lower in the pecking order. When inequality fuels violence, it is mostly the poor preying on the poor.

The so-called Gilded Age and the years following saw huge income disparities; in the early twentieth century, the highest-earning 1% of households earned 18% of all income, and the bottom 90% earned 60%. The equivalent numbers in 2022 are worse: 20% and around 50% (New Yorker Magazine 9/21/26 John Lanchester "The US' wealthiest--and stealthiest--class").