December 26, 2012

India starts to notice that pervasive infant malnutrition is a "national shame"

To a lot of Westerners, India seems cooler than China because it is diverse, democratic, and "postnational," while 21st Century China resembles a homogenous, authoritarian, competent, boring un-Davosy 19th-20th Century nationalistic country. And what could be uncooler than that?

On the other hand, there are reasons why nationalism was popular around the globe from the 18th Century onward, and is still hugely popular with the masses, as the World Cup and Olympics demonstrate almost everywhere (except India). 

Nationalism was basically about winning (or at least not losing) wars, and Europeans (such as Prussians) started to notice that having healthy, educated masses was conducive to not getting conquered. Europeans' colonial subjects started to get the lesson, too. 

For a variety of reasons, though, India lagged so far in nationalism that it now strikes many Westerners as futuristic. Even caste seems less backward to upper middle class Americans today than it did a generation ago: You mean there's a system where I could grandfather my kids and grandkids into my status and not have to worry that Tiger Mothers' spawn will outcompete them? Interesting. Tell me more ...

But, there are downsides to a lack of nationalism, as well.

From the Washington Post:
India wakes up to child malnutrition ‘shame,’ begins to make progress 
By Simon Denyer, Updated: Wednesday, December 26, 8:04 AM 
BANSWARA, India – Stung by the realization that it faced a child malnutrition crisis worse than in most African countries, India is finally waking to the scale of the problem. 
Progress is still slow and political will still patchy, but there are signs that a new approach to fighting malnutrition is just beginning to reap dividends. 
Efforts to improve rural health and education have combined with an expansion of a child welfare program that employs nearly 2 million village health workers to focus on maternal and infant health and nutrition. A rural jobs plan has helped raise wages in the countryside and new programs are educating adolescent girls, nearly half of whom will marry before age 18, about feeding and hygiene. 
There are indications it could be starting to pay off. An independent survey of malnutrition in 100 of India’s least-developed districts released in January showed the first signs of progress, with the proportion of underweight children falling to 42 percent, a drop of 11 percentage points. 
... Maharashtra is home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai, and is the country’s economic powerhouse. Still, malnutrition rates did not begin falling significantly until the state government started showing the political will to tackle the problem head-on. 
Nationally, the wake-up call came in 2007 with the realization that a decade-and-a-half of buoyant economic growth had scarcely dented child malnutrition rates, which remained higher than the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly half of Indian children under age 5 were stunted and underweight for their age, a government survey released that year showed, permanently impairing their mental and physical development. 
But in a country where many middle-class Indians find the subject of malnutrition rather boring, it took the idea that India was underperforming — not just compared with Africa but also with neighbors like Bangladesh — to embarrass the government into action. In 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called it a “national shame” and a failed strategy began to be reevaluated.

The notion of a "national shame" is old-fashioned, but it can be effective. If you are behind Bangladesh, you really need to get to work.
The family’s situation is just one illustration of what nutritionists call a perfect storm of factors driving India’s malnutrition crisis. Many children are born to teenage, anemic, malnourished mothers; feeding practices are poor; and the environment they live in, a crowded country where 600 million people have no access to toilets, is rife with fecal matter. 
Health programs were largely missing infants in the first two years of their lives, when malnutrition usually sets in and causes permanent mental and physical damage, Aguayo said. 
Fewer than half of Indian children start nursing within their first 24 hours, receiving water rather than the early, antibody-rich breast milk that helps protect against infections, and most spend their first few years subsisting on protein- and vitamin-poor diets of just rice or bread. The fact that economic growth has still not trickled down to the poorest communities and the low status of Indian women are also major factors. 
In Banswara, village health workers blame rampant malnutrition on the prevalence of child marriages. Sundari, Jitendra’s mother, got married at the age of 13 to a man she describes as a “good for nothing drunkard.” She said she spends most of her day cooking, washing, cleaning and fetching firewood or water for her in-laws, or trying to earn money as a day laborer in local fields. 
Even now, India’s progress in fighting malnutrition fails to impress many experts. 
Save the Children and World Vision recently ranked India alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo and Yemen at the bottom of a global Nutrition Barometer for its commitment and performance. 
While the nation frets constantly about whether economic growth and the stock market are up or down, the government has not collected data on child malnutrition since 2004 — something Purnima Menon of the International Food Policy Research Institute calls “mind-boggling.” ...
Spending comes easily to the government, critics say, but setting up mechanisms to monitor performance and raise accountability seems far less instinctive. 

Most of the evidence from Overseas Indians of various backgrounds suggests that India is underperforming relative to its genetic potential. (The big exception are the Gypsies, who with a 1,000 years in Europe to get up to speed, have managed to develop a culture that is the inverse of European peasant culture.)

59 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe India was Grover Norquist on steriods. A lots of cheap labor and no social welfare but I guess it changed sligtly.

Luke Lea said...

China is not nearly as "homogenous, authoritarian, competent, boring un-Davosy" as people think. Research the Hakka for instance. The various provinces in China, which are as populous as places like Germany and France, look upon each other like foreign countries and can barely understand each other's speech. Unlike Japan, there is almost zero solidarity in China, no sense of civil society, as this recent episode demonstrates:

http://tinyurl.com/3kykzj6

Anonymous said...

When I was in Bombay a few years ago I saw some interesting sights. At a construction site there were two little boys tasked with the job of cutting through a length of iron pipe. They were using a hacksaw blade, slowly pushing and pulling it back and forth. I imagine it would have to take them a week or so of steady work, but I guess it was the economical way to do it.

Another time an Indian colleague of mine pointed out an apartment block that looked like a total mess, but my friend said it was actually very exclusive and expensive to live there. I asked why it looked like shit from the outside and he laughed. The problem with joint ownership of a building (or anything I suppose) in India is that nobody will agree to pay common charges for things like painting the exterior, landscaping, or anything at all that doesn't benefit only the one paying.

So the idea that Indians are going to share resources in order to help other people's starving children is a fantasy.

Anonymous said...

Malnutrition in India is a huge problem but there's also evidence that the percentages are overstated, because Indian kids tend to be small and spindly compared to African ones.

But what a weird situation where you have this country of several hundred million productive citizens and several hundred more sickly walking zombies.

DR said...

"While the nation frets constantly about whether economic growth and the stock market are up or down, the government has not collected data on child malnutrition since 2004 "

When a nation has deep economic inequality you can generate robust economic growth while the poorest regions remain completely undeveloped.

A simple example, say you have a country where half the population lives on two dollars a day, and the other half has an average income of $8000/year.

The latter sub-population half is responsible for 99% of the GDP in the country. If their incomes rise by 4%, and the impoverished half's income falls by 10% then the GDP growth rate will still be... 3.9%.

In contrast if the impoverished half's income doubles over a four year period (a huge gain), then it will only raise GDP growth rates by 0.25%.

But a measure like childhood malnutrition much more heavily weigh the well-being of the poorest parts of the country. Which is probably why the Indian government doesn't really want to highlight them since economic development is highly unequal.

When you have impoverished regions in middle-income countries its much easier to ignore them than independent impoverished countries that are. There are many regions in India the size of Zimbabwe with about the same level of economic development, yet Zimbabwe gets ranked in international tables and hence gets noticed.

In contrast if Bangalore is producing red hot growth numbers, nobody really cares that Bihar is a devastated hell-hole that isn't going anywhere. It's easy to glance over the situation, aggregate Indian GDP, and relieve your worries, concluding that all billion people in the sub-continent are doing fine.

as said...

Population of India by year.

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:IND&dl=en&hl=en&q=india%20population

The situation wouldn't be so bad if the population were still ~ 400 million.

The Green Revolution was a well intentioned disaster.



Matthew said...

Is India post-nationalist, or is it just a country that has yet to move on from tribalism - Muslim Vs. Hindu, caste vs caste, etc.?

India strikes me as in many ways the future of the USA.

Anonymous said...

"For a variety of reasons, though, India lagged so far in nationalism that it now strikes many Westerners as futuristic"

Steve Sailer is the only Westerner I've ever heard of who has this idea. Are there really others? I would really like to read a more "mainstream" source that purports this.

DR said...

"The situation wouldn't be so bad if the population were still ~ 400 million."

Yeah, except Macau averaged a higher population growth rate over the same period, and is far denser than India. Yet Macau is one of the wealthiest and higher HDI ranked countries in the world.

https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:IND&dl=en&hl=en&q=india%20population#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_grow&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:IND:MAC&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

The problem isn't India's high population, it's Indians brutally incompetent and corrupt government. Under-development is not caused by high population relative to usable land, in fact the nicest places on Earth, like Japan or the Low Countries would be hell-holes.

rec1man said...

The DNA of the Gypsies has been traced to the Doma, a Dalit caste in Rajasthan ( near Punjab )

so their lower IQ does not surprise anyone

Matthew said...

In other news, Hawaiian governor Neil Abercrombie has made his selection to fill the seat of recently deceased Japanese-American Senator Daniel Inouye.

The Hawaii Democratic Party presented Governor Abercrombie (D) with three candidates. The first was Esther Kia'aina, a high-level state official and a woman of native Hawaiian ancestry. The second was Colleen Hanabusa, a Japanese-American US congresswoman and Inouye's preferred replacement. But since women, Japanese-Americans, and Hawaiian-Americans are all dramatically overrepresented in the US Senate, Abercrombie understandably settled on Brian Schatz, a graduate of an impoverished, gang-ridden inner-city school and member of a poor, highly oppressed ethno-religion that is heavily underrepresented in the United States Congress.

Matthew said...

"Yeah, except Macau averaged a higher population growth rate over the same period, and is far denser than India. Yet Macau is one of the wealthiest and higher HDI ranked countries in the world."

You do grasp the difference between a nation-state and a city-state, don't you? Macau has 569,000 people and is all of 11.4 square miles. It's economy is largely based on tourism and trade, especially casinos. It is in Macau, not Vegas, where Sheldon Adelson makes his real money.

One reason that city-states can propser is because they have already managed to draw in much of the talent from the hinterlands. India still has its hinterlands. It has nothing in common with a city-state but the population density: Uttar Pradesh, just one of India's 28 states, has 200 million people in an area roughly the size of Oregon.

It seems highly unlikely that a large, poor nation can ever become rich while already having India's crushing population density. Most rich countries did it the other way: got rich, then watched their populations soar.

Anonymous said...

I suspect the reason India may seem more in favour in some westerners eyes is the general prevalence of English there. Still I would think China would have a higher national I.Q. China is also about 90% Han. India has a large and hostile muslim minority, a separatist Sikh group, countless stratas of castes among the Hindus and is probably the most linguistically divided country on earth. I believe India has no fewer then 22 languages that enjoy official status of some kind or another. My country Canada has only TWO and that is enough to cause oceans of trouble. (Friendly aside to Americans, bilingualism is bad, very bad, no matter what your 'elites' will tell you.) China has also made serious attempts to control its population while India has done no such thing. I'd bet my bottom dollar on China being way ahead of India fifty years from now.

Anonymous said...

The problem isn't India's high population, it's Indians brutally incompetent and corrupt government. Under-development is not caused by high population relative to usable land, in fact the nicest places on Earth, like Japan or the Low Countries would be hell-holes.

The "problem" here is specifically infant malnutrition, and that is affected by high population to land ratio and high centralization of land ownership. It's hard to be malnourished if you have relatively decent subsistence land.

Anonymous said...

Do not try to shrink me, Gypsy. I serious.

Rev. Right said...

"The notion of a "national shame" is old-fashioned, but it can be effective."
--------------

Wait a minute, aren't all starving brown people our fault?

In the 21st century hierarchy of guilt, America dominates the "national shame" industry like we dominated the steel inustry of the 20th century.

Where the Indians have failed is in getting America to pay for feeding their children.

rob said...

India's problem: full of Indians

DoJ said...

It seems highly unlikely that a large, poor nation can ever become rich while already having India's crushing population density. Most rich countries did it the other way: got rich, then watched their populations soar.

...er, except the one other country comparable to India in size and population density (in its relevant provinces) is pulling it off. And several SE Asian countries with similar population density (and beyond city-state scale) are getting on the train as well.

Anonymous said...

...er, except the one other country comparable to India in size and population density (in its relevant provinces) is pulling it off. And several SE Asian countries with similar population density (and beyond city-state scale) are getting on the train as well.

Except China instituted a one-child policy and as a result has lower population growth and is expected to be surpassed by India in population in a few decades.

Anonymous said...

"er, except the one other country comparable to India in size and population density (in its relevant provinces) is pulling it off."

China is not comparable to India in population density, or even size. China is about 3 times larger than India, and has about a third the population density. No, population density isn't everything, but all else equal I'd rather be in a country with a lower one.

DoJ said...

Note the "in its relevant provinces" qualifier. Yes, China technically has a lot more land area, but most of the excess is practically empty. The reasons for China and India's divergence lie elsewhere.

Discard said...

I've read somewhere's that India is a modern nation of 200 million living amongst 800 million primitives. If so, it may be that the 200 million moderns care no more about the 800 million primitives than normal Americans care about murdered Blacks in Chicago.

Thomas said...

"Most of the evidence from Overseas Indians of various backgrounds suggests that India is underperforming relative to its genetic potential." Don't rely on this. The law of really large numbers, India's genetic and cultural diversity, and a self-selected pool of people with the skills and education to be valuable outside of the country make the Overseas population highly unrepresentative.

Anonymous said...

The big mistake of the 21st century is to confuse India with China, and for a lot of uinformed persons to think that the success of one (ie China) means the success of the other (India). Basically the two nations are as different as chalk and cheese and have absolutely nothing in common.
Before the British conquered the vast territory (there is a clue in that fact alone), India was nothing more than a geographic expression than a unitary state - the story of India has been, through the millenia, the story of strong, vigorous tough warriors from the north defeating the weakened and enfeebled trpoical natives of the soil, and then imposing their will upon the natives, but in the course of time, the conquerors are in evitably dissolved into the langor, superstition and feeblement of the sons of soil.
What you have in India is little more than an insect-like vicious malthusian fight for scarce resources and the 'privilege' of existence, mediated by some very heavy stratifications of ethnic genetic interest imposed to allow the power gene lines (through right of conquest and force of arms and superstition), to thrive at the expense of the innumerable nematodes who clustered at the root of the tree.

Anonymous said...

On the why White people like India thing...

The other week I dealt with 1 Indian and 2 Communist Chinese...

The Indian was much friendlier and warmer (although the female Chinese was nice to...ftr I'm a white female not some white guy with yellow fever)

I think Indians have a warmth about them that is nice.

Asians...asians are weird man...just today I was out walking and some Asian family was driving a car up and down the street looking at the mansions in the neighborhood and I'm like 'Dude, stop trying to be something your not' and like one night I saw this Asian family dressed to the hilt in their Mercedes and they seriously looked as though they were Russian Mafia...but Asian style...

Asians do it for the money, the Indian guy genuinely sounded like a guy who wanted to help people

Ali said...

This is the first I've heard of India lacking in nationalism. The media of both India and Pakistan both have frequent episodes of someone getting upset that somebody else is tarnishing national honour. It's a crime in India to insult national symbols and a couple of Indian states have even made it compulsory to play the national anthem before theatre movie showings.

All the sports nationalism that gets directed towards the World Cup and Olympics in other countries gets focused on cricket.

Anonymous said...

"For a variety of reasons, though, India lagged so far in nationalism that it now strikes many Westerners as futuristic."

They tried old-stye nationalism back in the early 60s, with the border dispute with China. Got soundly beaten and it must have made them think.

But caste and religious division must mean there are many Indias. Don't you need a nation to be nationalistic?

Anonymous said...

India is indeed a lot like the US in its postmodern character - but one of those is that there is a large profitable industry devoted to solving non-problems. A recent piece by Columbia's Arvind Panagariya - a leading economist on India - discusses the absurd character of malnutrition numbers and why it is likely that lower body weight for properly nourished Indians is the culprit. See http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-10-01/edit-page/30230007_1_underweight-children-maternal-mortality-mortality-rate

Anonymous said...

Off-topic, but here is a test score gap that really does seem to be closing which may be of interest to some readers:

http://italianthro.blogspot.com/2012/12/pisa-test-score-gap-closing.html?m=1

Anonymous said...

"You mean there's a system where I could grandfather my kids and grandkids into my status and not have to worry that Tiger Mothers' spawn will outcompete them? "

John Taylor Gatto has developed the argument much forther.

How Hindu Schooling Came To America (I)

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/1m.htm

How Hindu schooling came to America, England, Germany, and France at just about the same time is a story which has never been told. A full treatment is beyond the scope of this book, but I’ll tell you enough to set you wondering how an Asiatic device specifically intended to preserve a caste system came to reproduce itself in the early republic, protected by influentials of the magnitude of Clinton and Eddy. Even a brief dusting off of schooling’s Hindu provenance should warn you that what you know about American schooling isn’t much.

Chicago said...

Send money now. Get the usual cast of rock stars and actors and start organizing fund raising concerts. Bring out the photos of the half-starved, that'll spur things on. After all, we are the missionaries to the world.
The Indian government and better-off classes may be practicing their own brand of eugenics through passivity and neglect.

Anonymous said...

Well, I've met a lot of Indian expatriates in my time (easily over a hundred) and I'd say 80%+ of them were pretty patriotic/nationalistic.

They were pretty damned convinced the future was India's and not the West's (not that they objected to hanging out there in the meantime).

These were all upper-crust Indians of course, but I still don't think India is short of nationalist sentiment -- see the BJP.

BrokenSymmetry said...

Yes, but they have money to spare for a space program. In a way, Hinduism is a heartless belief system in that the poor/disabled are merely paying for sins in their past life.

BB said...

Alternatively, you could say that Gypsies have created a successful parasytic culture that has ensured their survival for a thousand years. As we speak, they are in fact outbreeding native Europeans.

Today, they are mostly a semi-nomadic caste living off of their host society´s largesse and/or charity. In addition to earning their livelihood in crime and entertainment, they have learned to benefit from socal security, whereas in the past the relied on beggary.

Anonymous said...

Nationalism was basically about winning (or at least not losing) wars,

Nationalism was about nations acting as a unit. It differed from feudalism and tribalism. When wars were fought by classes or castes of elite warriors, such as knights or samurai, the peasants had no stake in such wars. Peasants and even merchants of enemy nations continued to fraternize and trade with each other, and secretly mocked the "warlords".

and Europeans (such as Prussians) started to notice that having healthy, educated masses was conducive to not getting conquered.

What makes nationalism different from earlier regimes is that the nation acts as a unit, in war or peace. There are no more knights and peasants, but rather citizens, and all citizens no matter how poor and disenfranchized, have a stake. The notorious hyper-nationalism and militarism of the lower middle class is an example.

Anonymous said...

We Europeans should pay the Gypsies to go back to India and pay India to tale them.

Baloo said...

Matthew, thanks for the Inouye comment — You've given me
a blog post.

Anonymous said...

If you were to divide China into 3 sections. The east coast 1/3 of the country would have about 1 billion people. It's a country of 1.3 billion total so that's quite the population density.

Indian Guy said...

"a crowded country where 600 million people have no access to toilets, is rife with fecal matter."

Ok, India is a poor country where not many people cannot afford homes with running water. But Americans in the 1800s used latrines and outhouses, right? Why don't Indians?

I'm an Indian-American who wants Indians to do better in India.

Anonymous said...

Overseas Indians do well in first world countries for two reasons:

1. They are or are descended from the top 10,000 graduates/every year in India. e.g. Graduates of IIT/IIM and other top academic performers.

2. As residents of a 1st world country with strong families and showing none of the single mom/teen pregnancy culture, they can live a middle class life with just hard work rather than brains (e.g. run a UPS store with family help)

My estimate of average IQ for Indians without malnutrition is about 88.

Anonymous said...

What India needs is for the Hindu right to smack the Muslims around and finish off the caste system. One of the virtues of the Hindu national right is that somehow they are against the caste system.

HAR said...

India seems to be a place where cleanliness is much less of a priority than it has been in other areas of the world. Is my impression correct? If so, does anybody know the reasoning behind this? It seems that areas in the Middle East and East Asia that are at similar levels of poverty are simply not as dirty.

Anonymous said...

"In the 21st century hierarchy of guilt, America dominates the "national shame" industry like we dominated the steel inustry of the 20th century."

Yer, probably true, although there are certainly some good niche producers like Canada and Sweden.

Anyone would think Sweden used to have had some evil fascist empire in Africa where they enslaved women and tortured homesexuals.

Anonymous said...

Honestly the guy who emphasized niceness is a lot closer to the answer than is the SWPLs covet a caste system analysis. It would have really helped if Steve could have lived in one of the red dirt states he is always talking up. The constant neuroses about the future status of one's children is largely absent here in Texas. I mean sure everyone wants their kid to get in UT but that is as much about continuing a football culture as an anxiety about status.

Americans just really don't like Asians. They are typically graspy and selfish. The also take advantage of WASP kindness in a way that Indians don't. Yes, China will most probably win, but that will be a damn shame. China will be the first super power to enter the super power game with no positive vision/ reason for seizing world power. No virtu/Vergil, no blood and steel, no manifest destiny. The best illustration of the coming Chinese hegemon is the Chinese drive thru scene in Dude Where's my Car.

We take Tibet, and then...um Korea, and then...um Vietnam, and then

Anonymous said...

They were pretty damned convinced the future was India's and not the West's (not that they objected to hanging out there in the meantime)

They do seem pretty and arrogant and chauvinistic in a way that is all but illegal for whites.

Ali said...

I will say in India, and the sub-continent as a whole, there isn't much of a sense of community. That's why even the well-heeled will dump litter without a second thought since it's not their problem to clean it up.

Anonymous said...

BrokenSymmetry said...
Yes, but they have money to spare for a space program. In a way, Hinduism is a heartless belief system in that the poor/disabled are merely paying for sins in their past life.


So-called western belief systems can be heartless too. Eternal damnation for masturbation and divorce, anyone?

Anonymous said...

The also take advantage of WASP kindness in a way that Indians don't.

What WASP kindness?

Anonymous said...

So-called western belief systems can be heartless too. Eternal damnation for masturbation and divorce, anyone?


LOL

Eternal damnation? that is the worst you have got? Sheesh, how is that compared to actual suffering right now? So, a saying that some delinquent is going to hell after death is the moral and physical equivalent of starving in the here and now? Seriously?

Anonymous said...

The WASP kindness that let your relatives stay here after they finished building that railroad. The WASP kindness that didn't nuke Beijing after you got involved in a war that didn't concern you. The WASP kindness that doesn't punch you in the face after you dry clean the shirts I asked you machine wash. That WASP kindness.

Anonymous said...

The problem with India in one word: hinduism

In two words: caste system



Just look at the sacred city of brahmins, Varanasi, in north india and see if you can avoid throwing up:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ckr96be

Anonymous said...

When I was in grade school, I gave money to feed starving children in India. Now I am a middle aged man and there are still starving children in India, even after the Green revolution. I think they have some sort of racket going on there.

Anonymous said...

The WASP kindness that used us as slaves for building the railroad.The WASP kindness that invaded us during the Korean war.The WASP kindness that supports ethnic minorities to attack us. The WASP kindness that forces multiculturalism onto us.

Anonymous said...

From the recent news and the large protests in India, it seems India is also starting to notice that unpenalized gang-rape of undefended women is also a disgrace.

Anonymous said...

The WASP kindness that let your relatives stay here after they finished building that railroad. The WASP kindness that didn't nuke Beijing after you got involved in a war that didn't concern you. The WASP kindness that doesn't punch you in the face after you dry clean the shirts I asked you machine wash. That WASP kindness.

This commenter may have gotten lost on his way to stormfront.org

Anonymous said...

Another thing I read that some manufactoring jobs in China now pay 4 to 6 per hr which is similar to US 1970's wages for low skilled jobs. India's call center work which went down a little because of people complaining pays less and usually requires more education in India they will get someone with a college degree in the States a call center job usually requires only high school. I notice that manufactoing like Call Center work found out that overseas isn't always to your benefit. In manufactoring China and Mexico are upping wages at the 4 to 6 per hr range more and a lot of countries like India and the Phillpines its a pain when the country doesn't have the phone system that you have in the US.

Anonymous said...

Well, actually take a Riverside County they have less college than a lot of upper-middle countries in Texas. In fact what I heard is the upper-middle areas of Texas are pushing there kids as hard as those in California. Riverside and many inland Califronia don't put pressure on kids while Fort Bend Texas average at 78,000 and about 25 percent asian does.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I think Orange County believe or not could care less if kids get into elite colleges. The exceptions are cities like Newport Beach or Irvine with a lot of Asians. College is less important to them than making money from real estate, so not every county in California is interested in college as much as you are suggesting.

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