I grew up in a small coal-mining community in Pennsylvania.

After each high school graduation,
the "best and the brightest" moved off
to the city, to college, to better jobs.
They never came back, except to visit family.

Now imagine a 75 year period of
skimming off "the cream of the gene pool"
and leaving the remainder to re-populate.

We visited there after years away.
The younger generations are generally a scruffy lot
of welfare recipients, petty criminals, and illegitimate children.

I would think there'd have been some scientific study
of this generational decay.......

<rj>