In regard to your article on the economics of spanking, I have two theories that may explain what you are describing. One is that the less money a person earns, the less intelligent, as a rule, he must be. There may be a correlation between IQ and spiritual acuteness. From this two things seem to follow.

First, the parents feel fewer pangs of conscience when they beat their children. (This is unrelated to the problem of whether or not their decision of spank is a good one.)

Second, the children, having inherited their parents' traits, will be, on average, more prone to delinquency and less amenable to persuasion, such that they both deserve and benefit from spanking more.

My second idea is based on the temperament theory. It seems that the vast majority of NTs or Rationals (your temperament) would be found in the high-income category, and these are the sort of people who, I imagine, would be the least likely to spank their children. Although NTs comprise only 5-7% of the population, this may explain at least part of the gap.

I also cannot agree with your explanation that "[l]ow-income parents are more likely to spank their children because low-income parents are more likely to have been spanked themselves". If p₁ is the proportion of low-income parents who were spanked as children and q₁ is the proportion of high-income parents who were spanked as children, then from the fact that p₁ > q₁ it does not follow that p₁*p₂ + (1-p₁)*p₃ > q₁*q₂ + (1-q₁)*q₃, where p₂ and q₂ refer to the proportion of the parents who were spanked as children who decide to spank their children, and p₃ and q₃ is the proportion of the parents who were not spanked as children but who will, nonetheless, decide to spank.

Warmest regards,

Dmitry Chernikov

February 15, 2003