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U.S. fact of the day
High school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females over the past 25 years.
Here is the link, with a photo. Loyal MR readers will know that I am a strong and genuine non-paternalist. But if you are a paternalist, and you are looking for one place to start, well...it's not just the injuries that should point your attention in this direction. We have to raise tax revenue from somewhere, right? Currently we are subsidizing cheerleading and, along the lines of Robert Frank's column, that makes no more sense than subsidizing fuel.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 17, 2008 at 08:26 AM in Sports | Permalink
Comments
I like human pyramids! But in my limited experience high school cheerleaders are not the brightest bulbs, and their parents (usually the moms) are some of the most obnoxious stage parents I've ever met. Like beauty pageant folks on steroids.
Subsidize high school football, track, futbal (soccer), rugby, baseball, and basketball. Crew, gymnastics, swimming, and lacrosse (and field hockey?) usually have financially-able and supportive parents.
Posted by: at Aug 17, 2008 8:44:23 AM
Oh, and subsidize high school debate, forensics, drama, and art. Especially debate - skills for life.
Posted by: at Aug 17, 2008 8:49:15 AM
Is cheerleading being subsidized, or is it another subsidy for football and basketball teams? I am no fan of cheerleading, but without a doubt, if all the revenues and costs of highschool sports and activities were to be eliminated, the elimination of the boy sports and activities would save more tax money than the girl sports and activities. [My chess team was 100% male and maybe soaked up $50 a year in costs. Surprisingly, the cheerleaders did not come to our tournaments.]
Posted by: liberalarts at Aug 17, 2008 9:32:18 AM
67 catastrophic injuries in 25 years nationwide calls for government intervention? In contrast, 17 people died from skiing in Colorado alone in the 2007-2008 season.
Posted by: Ted Frank at Aug 17, 2008 9:32:27 AM
Oh, subsidize chess and math and science clubs, too.
Posted by: at Aug 17, 2008 10:07:18 AM
67 catastrophic injuries in 25 years nationwide calls for government intervention? In contrast, 17 people died from skiing in Colorado alone in the 2007-2008 season.
There oughta be a law:
Skiers should be required to wear helmets, coats with airbags, and no alcohol while skiing or within 8 hours before skiing. Zero tolerance! Where's MADD when you need them?
And all trees and other obstructions on or within 25 feet of a marked ski slope should have crash barriers around them.
Just for starters....
Posted by: at Aug 17, 2008 10:12:21 AM
"High school cheerleading accounted for 65.1 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries among high school females over the past 25 years."
Isn't this rather irrelevant? Shouldn't we measure something like, the number of catastrophic injuries per girl-hour devoted to the event? More American high school girls got hurt cheerleading than playing Russian roulette--at least I hope!--during the last 25 years too; it doesn't prove cheerleading is more dangerous.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Aug 17, 2008 10:39:00 AM
I can't back this up, but I bet if you changed the metric--to something like, "Number of moderate to catastrophic injuries during the last ten years"--then the cheerleading percentage would drop a lot. That's because more and more girls are playing sports at the high school level (e.g. in many schools they have a girls' soccer team when they didn't 20 years ago) and because in cheerleading, I think there is probably a disproportionate amount of catastrophic injuries (from dropping girls on their heads etc.).
Purely anecdotal, but in my high school I knew a bunch of girls who got pretty hurt playing soccer, but I don't know anyone who got hurt cheerleading. (Of course, I didn't talk to many cheerleaders in high school.) Also for clarification, I don't remember if the actual high school had a girls' soccer team; they might have been playing for a travel team for the city or something.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Aug 17, 2008 10:51:14 AM
One last issue and I'll be quiet: When TC says "[c]urrently we are subsidizing cheerleading," what does he mean? Is he referring to tax dollars going to public schools that have cheerleading squads? Or is he even including private schools, where general tuition from everybody goes into paying for the cheerleading squad?
Either way, someone could use the same neoclassical framework to prove the opposite. We could invent all sorts of positive externalities from the existence of cheerleading squads and claim the market is providing an inefficiently low number of cheerleaders. That's why I distrust Pigovian analyses, because you can often cherry pick the effects of something to get whatever answer you want.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Aug 17, 2008 10:57:42 AM
Bob Murphy is dead right about the irrelevance of the statistic. If you abolish cheerleading something else will be the source of a high percentage of injuries. If you restricted H.S females to one sport, say golf, then 100% of the injuries would be from golf. Dangerous game!
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Aug 17, 2008 11:26:48 AM
i wonder what possessed those 26 cheerleaders to see how many they could jam into a single elevator? maybe their constant inner chatter of "look at how skinny i am" was particularly strong and pervasive throughout the entire gaggle of girls. and to prove it, they decided to see how many of their skinny little hotbodies they could fit in the elevator?
Posted by: randy at Aug 17, 2008 11:51:40 AM
Most of you are very, very unusual people- you can see right through to the meaninglessness of the statistic statistic. Most of the public would be unable to. This is why we have so many silly "safety" laws and regulations, with outright bans of some activities.
Posted by: Yancey Ward at Aug 17, 2008 12:26:20 PM
I wonder, what's the sport that accounts for the highest percentage of catastrophic injuries for guys?
Must be something like Football... so, why not a ban on Football?
And as liberalarts already pointed out, this makes even financially more sense...
Posted by: Finja at Aug 17, 2008 12:36:31 PM
Most of you are very, very unusual people
Yes, we spend time on a Sunday reading blogs and ... commenting....
Posted by: at Aug 17, 2008 12:59:44 PM
Cheerleading should be subsidized. First, it enforces important gender norms. And second, the girls are usually cute and wear short skirts. Easily a net win for society.
My high school girlfriend was a cheerleader. Now she's an investment banker in Moscow, albeit one with atypically muscular calves.
Dude cheerleaders, of course, should be taxed heavily.
Posted by: brent at Aug 17, 2008 1:17:45 PM
I can't tell whether the comments are being sarcastic re. the percentage statistic; it is probative, certainly, regarding the activity's relative risk.
I also can't tell what the original reference to "subsidizing fuel" means, but I haven't followed the link -- assume it's something germane to teen pregnancy.
Finally, what's the matter with subsidizing an activity that attracts the (allegedly) stupidest members of society -- and those among the most likely to reproduce -- and severely injures them? This is the genius behind bug zappers. Presently we are over-investing in mosquito netting, teen-wise.
Posted by: Clyde Mnestra at Aug 17, 2008 2:28:48 PM
it is probative, certainly, regarding the activity's relative risk.
I don't think so. Not without knowing how much participation there is in cheerleading vs other sports, and how often cheerleaders perform vs other activities. Note among other things that it covers 25 years, during which there has been a large expansion in women's sports. How much of this 65% was racked up when there were many fewer athletic opportunities for women than today?
Besides, dig into this and you find 67 serious injuries in 25 years, when there are 92,500 female H.S. cheerleaders every year.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Aug 17, 2008 4:28:10 PM
It depends on what you mean by probative. We know something, courtesy of that statistic, relative to expectations that cheerleading was a stress-free activity; if we hadn't any information concerning participation rates, it would be sufficient to excite our interest in gathering it. It is obviously the case that we would know MORE if, inter alia, we had participation numbers; frequency of performance, mentioned as another desirable piece of information, shows that there's a meaningful difference between probative information, sufficient information, and interesting information. It'd be more important to know what degree injuries of various kinds are easily prevented.
Posted by: Clyde Mnestra at Aug 17, 2008 5:43:29 PM
Do not mess with cheerleaders in Texas, the moms will put a hit on you. They don't mess around.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Aug 17, 2008 10:23:20 PM
Not everything has to have a policy implication.
Posted by: Ed Lopez at Aug 18, 2008 8:43:00 AM
Football is actually the most evil sport.
47 percent of high school pigskin players suffered a concussion each season, according to statistics gathered by the National Center for Injury Prevention. Thirty-five percent of players say they had more than one concussion in the same season. Multiple concussions increase the risk of long-term damage to the brain, doctors say.
Cheerleading, however, is pretty bad. It's essentially gymnastics done with fewer safeguards by less professional people. My sister did off and on from elementary school through college, and has two blown knees, horrible problems with her wrists, and had at least one significant injury per year. I, on the other hand, stayed in my room with a book and have two intact ACLs.
Posted by: Amber at Aug 18, 2008 10:27:41 AM
@Bob Murphy:That's why I distrust Pigovian analyses, because you can often cherry pick the effects of something to get whatever answer you want.
For once, I agree with Bob's externality analysis :-)
This is exactly what people do all the time on oil: invent all kinds of externalities they can attribute to it, make shaky assumptions that no one will check (like counting military and congestion costs, as if those were costs of oil rather than stupid politicians and timing your driving in sync with others), and announce some crude, inefficient policy to remedy the imbalance.
And of *course* we can't just slap a tax on oil to cover the alleged problem! No, that would let people continue to drive SUVs and otherwise ignore the pronouncements of environmentalist shamans (like Slate's Green Lantern). And we certainly can't slap a tax on oil and divert it to fixing the alleged problem! Why, that would make too much sense!
Posted by: Person at Aug 18, 2008 12:47:21 PM
I thought the subtitle of this blog was "Small steps toward a much better world", not "Irrelevant Facts While I Do An Imitative Freakonomics Jig". (I would also accept "Small steps towards overanalyzing small things" or "Relevant economics is dead and I intend to prove it")
Posted by: alec at Aug 18, 2008 5:06:16 PM
I thought the subtitle of this blog was "Small steps toward a much better world", not "Irrelevant Facts While I Do An Imitative Freakonomics Jig". (I would also accept "Small steps towards overanalyzing small things" or "Relevant economics is dead and I intend to prove it")
Or maybe: "Not for those lacking a sense of humor."
Yes, you.
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