Quality Life Years Lost to Meritocracy
Across the world, people have different abilities, goals and desires, shaped by an interplay between their inherited DNA differences (genetic propensities) and environmental conditions (e.g., social, political, economic, natural and biophysical).420
The result is a drive–a competition–to create, arrange and select into social environments that best align with one’s genetic-shaped desires and preferences.413
This selection and alignment process is a determinant of life course experiences, outcomes and well-being.
For example, psychologists Christopher Beam and Eric Turkheimer et al. write: “People do not randomly select environments, but maneuver and position themselves into environments and milieus where they can thrive…”85
Individuals with high polygenic scores for educational attainment (EA) are an example.86,29
In a meritocracy, high educational attainment (EA) leads to occupations with higher incomes, wealth accumulation, social influence and privileges, which in turn leads to advantages in health, happiness and longevity.86,29
These EA advantages are reflected in polygenic scores.
Psychologist Reut Avinun makes this point about polygenic scores: “the educational attainment polygenic score is considered to be one of the most powerful polygenic scores in psychology, and it has been widely used in research…”88
In their article “Implications Of The Genomic Revolution For Education Research And Policy,” Morris, Hinke and Pike et al. write: “the offspring of parents with high polygenic scores for education are also themselves likely to have high polygenic scores for education owing to direct genetic inheritance.”89
According to Allegrini et al.: “Individuals with stronger genetic predispositions to educational attainment tend to grow up in higher socioeconomic status families.”90
When this is coupled with heritable influences such as “political attitudes and values,” the class structures of social hierarchy are reinforced.91
For example, according to economist Branko Milanovic: “a deeply entrenched new class structure” is appearing, a heritable “self-sustaining upper-class” due to the genetics of assortative mating and meritocracy.92
Researcher F. A. Torvik et al., in an article for Nature write: “Assortment based on educational attainment may have particularly broad consequences. It could pose a societal challenge by concentrating human and economic resources and could present a health challenge because genetic influences on educational attainment correlate with most health phenotypes. Furthermore, educational attainment has increased massively over the last few generations.”93
For meritocrats, a fair and just world is one where differences in education, occupation, income and wealth should determine differences in the quality life privileges, pleasures and outcomes people deserve.
They argue meritocracy and economic inequality determines fair distributions of income, wealth and life course well-being because differences in cognitive ability, talent, effort and productivity make some people more deserving–well-being across our individual & cultural differences is a political and socioeconomic threat.
However, polygenic advantages and disadvantages are not independent of environmental influences that can amplify or diminish the expression of these advantages because environmental conditions can be manipulated by norms and institutions that vary across countries and cultures, and across generations.
Moreover, while there may be a difference in capabilities between surgeons and home health aides, these differences should not determine differences in life course well-being.333
Meritocracy Extracts Quality Life Years from Descending Levels of a Social Hierarchy
Today, neoliberalism and meritocracy are prevailing models of political and economic power in the dominant social hierarchies of the 21st century, determining the distribution of income and wealth which in turn determines the distribution of quality life years across a population.
As a result, privileged individuals shape norms and institutions to extract quality life years from descending levels of the hierarchy.
For example, researchers Daniel Oesch and Nathalie Vigna make the following point about the decline in quality of life years for the working class in the United States: “Objective indicators show that over the last few decades the working class has been left behind in many respects in the Western world. Notably, their real incomes have stagnated. The most tangible sign that the quality of life of the working class has declined comes from mortality rates in the United States, showing that the life expectancy of lowly educated middle-aged whites has been falling since 1999.”96
According to economist Anne Case and Nobel Laureate Angus Deaton: “Without a 4-yr college diploma, it is increasingly difficult to build a meaningful and successful life in the United States.”97
They explain the BA divide has created the following inglorious social effect: “In the richest large country in the world, with frontier medical technology, expected years lived between 25 and 75 declined for most of a decade for men and women without a 4-yr degree.”98
Research by economists Raj Chetty and David Cutler et al. found “In the United States between 2001 and 2014, higher income was associated with greater longevity, and differences in life expectancy across income groups increased.”99
According to Nobel laureate Angus Deaton: “Not only does the top 1% of the income distribution live longer than everyone else, but the gap in life expectancy at 40 years of age is widening, and there has been little gain in life expectancy among the lowest income individuals living in the United States. The infamous 1% is not only richer, but much healthier. Conditional on reaching 40 years of age, individuals in the top 1% of income have 10 to 15 more years to enjoy their richly funded lives and to spend time with their children and grandchildren, and they are pulling away from everyone else. Inequality in health reinforces inequality in income, and perhaps even a longer life is for sale.”100
Anne Case and Deaton argue the educational system has reinforced the problem: “The K-12 educational system is largely designed to prepare people to go to college, although only a third succeed in doing so, something that is wasteful and unjust.”101
There is something morally defective about all of this.
…by WGW
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