Inductivist

The debate continues on Twitter about whether Hispanic immigrants tend to litter more.

On a related issue, General Social Survey interviewers rated the homes of respondents in terms of cleanliness from 'very clean' (1) to 'dirty' (5).  I calculated the means for those born in the US and those who were not (sample size = 7,062). The mean for native-borns is 1.96, the mean for immigrants is 1.86, so immigrants are not messier, they're cleaner.

What if we look by ethnic group and immigrant status? Let's limit the analysis to groups with at least 100 respondents. I'll put immigrant means in parentheses.

Mean unclean house score

Blacks 2.17  (2.02)
Mexican  2.00 (2.05)
Irish  1.98 (1.60)
Scottish  1.95 (1.89)
German  1.88 (1.68)
English/Welsh  1.84 (1.68)
Polish  1.84 (1.55)
Italian  1.77 (1.89)

Immigrants tend to be cleaner than native-borns. Mexican and Italian immigrants are the exceptions with slightly higher means than their American-born counterparts. On the question of Mexican immigrants, their score is only surpassed by blacks.

UPDATE: As I indicated, the debate actually focuses on Hispanics, not just Mexicans. The mean for all Hispanic immigrants is 1.90. For native-born Latinos, it's 2.03--a mean that is very close to that of Mex-Ams, and is only surpassed by blacks.

In the last post, I accidentally discovered that people with no religion have the dirtiest homes of all religious statuses.  Let's look at this a little more. Below you will see mean dirtiness scores by church attendance. I'll limit the analysis to whites -- blacks show no trend:

Mean dirtiness score

Never attends  2.11
< one per year  2.04
Once per year  1.87
Several times per year  1.85
Once a month  1.91
2-3 times a month  1.85
Nearly every week  1.77
Every week  1.64
More than weekly 1.72

You can see here a tendency for more religious people to keep a cleaner home. This is consistent with my earlier point that religious individuals tend to be more conscientious or self-disciplined.  Lazy people, even if they believers, may want to stay in bed on a cold Sunday morning. Keep in mind that the gaps are not big here: If we focus on the largest difference, never attenders vs. weeklies, the gap is close to one-half of a standard deviation --  a moderate difference.

UPDATE: I just a quick look at dirtiness scores by political orientation. The pattern is very similar to that for religiosity: extremely conservative people are about half a standard deviation cleaner than extreme liberals.

Pacific Life pulled its ads from Fox News after Tucker Carlson said immigrants make America dirtier. In my experience, black and Hispanic communities tend to be dirtier than white neighborhoods (although I lived in a clean middle-class, predominantly black neighborhood), but is this the case for immigrants? 

I don't have data for neighborhoods, but General Social Survey interviewers rated people's homes during interviews. Ratings ranged from very clean (1) to dirty (5).  The mean for people born in the country is 1.93; for immigrants, it's 1.86. So immigrants' homes are slightly cleaner.

Tucker might have had a white/immigrant comparison in mind. The white mean is 1.88 -- a number similar to immigrants.

Let's look at a dirtiness ranking among selected ethnic groups in the US:

Mean household dirtiness (N = 3,657)

Black  2.17
American Indian  2.17
Mexican  2.04
Irish  1.91
Swedish  1.91
Chinese  1.90
Filipino  1.90
India  1.90
German  1.87
Polish  1.85
English/Welsh  1.85
Puerto Rican  1.82
Italian  1.73
Russian  1.71
Greek  1.65

Blacks, American Indians, and to a lesser extent, Mexican Americans have the highest dirtiness ratings which is consistent with my experience of neighborhoods.  Greeks are the cleanest.  It seems to me that cleanliness is a measure of conscientiousness. Jews seem conscientious, so let's look at religion, too, and see if the numbers match my thinking.

Buddhist  2.13
None  2.10
Protestant  1.91
Catholic  1.84
Hindu  1.84
Muslim  1.76
Jews  1.68

Jews come in the cleanest. Buddhists and people with no religion are the dirtiest.  Religious people do tend to be more conscientious.  Keep in mind the differences are not large.  The gap between Greeks and blacks/American Indians is only one-half of a standard deviation.

It's possible that people differ somewhat in terms of indoor and outdoor behavior.  I'm messy in my house but freak out if I drop a gum wrapper in a public place.

I looked at the relationship between eleven predictors and the cleanliness of one's home as assessed by the GSS interviewer (sample size = 1,041):

OLS standardized regression coefficients

Age .15*
Male v female .02
Black v white -.12
Other v white .01
Size of city .00
South v North .00
Number of children -.04
Education .10*
IQ .08*
Church attendance .13*
Conservatism .06*

*statistically significant

The following predicts household cleanliness: being older, being more educated, higher intelligence, more frequent church attendance, and being more conservative poltically. The strongest significant predictor is age, while conservatism is the weakest.

You might see something different, but the image that emerges here is an establishment person--smart, educated, religious, conservative, and mature.

GSS interviewers rated the cleanliness of the homes of the people they surveyed. Cleanliness ranged from dirty (1) to very clean (5). Here are the means by religious affiliation (sample size = 1,893):

Mean cleanliness

Protestants 4.19*
Catholics 4.25*
Jews 4.37*
No religion 3.98

*significantly cleaner than those with no religion


People with a religion are cleaner than those without one. The means for Protestants and Catholics rise to 4.24 and 4.28 if I remove non-whites.

The correlation between church attendance and cleanliness is .15--a small but statistically significant relationship. And anti-religion people can't claim here that religious people are just lying about the behavior in question.

One more indicator that religious people tend to behave better than the irreligious.

Back in the day, hippies liked to call cops pigs, but this video shows that it's leftists who deserve the title. 

Interviewers rated General Social Survey participants' homes for dirtiness. Ratings varied from "very clean" (1) to "dirty" (5). I calculated means by political orientation (sample size = 2,260):

Mean dirtiness score

Extremely liberal 2.15
Liberal 1.87
Slightly liberal 1.68*
Moderate 1.85
Slightly conservative 1.79
Conservative 1.67*
Extremely conservative 1.71

*p < .05, two-tail test, significantly cleaner than extreme liberals


Extreme liberals are significantly dirtier than either slight liberals or conservatives.

Men

Are smart people clean or dirty? Haven't you seen both images, right? The squeaky clean George Will on the one hand, and the professor who looks like he slept in those clothes on the other. General Social Survey interviewers rated the cleanliness of houses along with asking a zillion questions, and here is the mean IQ for each rating:


Mean IQ

Whites
Very clean 101.6
Clean 99.5
So-so 96.9
Not very clean 92.5
Dirty 97.0

Blacks
Very clean 91.7
Clean 92.2
So-so 89.7
Not very clean 82.2
Dirty 82.6

For both races, smarter people tend to be cleaner. This is a bit of support that virtues tend to run together. Notice, however, that the mean IQ for whites jumps up a bit among the "dirty" so the stereotype of the brainy white slob is probably true for a minority of smart people.