Causa-efeito entre problemas económicos e estilos de vida desestruturados

Paul Krugman:

What Wilson argued, however, was that social dysfunction was an effect, not a cause. His work, culminating in the justly celebratedbook “When Work Disappears,” made the case that declining job opportunities for urban workers, rather than some underlying cultural or racial disposition, explained the decline in prime-age employment, the decline of the traditional family, and more.

How might one test Wilson’s hypothesis? Well, you could destroy job opportunities for a number of white people, and see if they experienced a decline in propensity to work, stopped forming stable families, and so on. And sure enough, that’s exactly what has happened to parts of nonmetropolitan America effectively stranded by a changing economy.