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Essays

Were 1970s Korean Orphanages a Great Place to Raise Kids?

Motivated reasoning means you can always invent new stories

Richard Hanania's avatar
Richard Hanania
Sep 25, 2026

Parents pass on their genes and their culture to their offspring, so when a group has certain traits, it can be difficult to tell which is more responsible.

One way to get around this is through cross-adoption studies. If children from culture A are adopted into culture B, we can just look at what happens in their lives and see which group they end up m…

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