[naasking]

Of course they are, but putting the locus of control on external factors disempowers people. "These people didn't do as well as they could have due to poor impulse control" is a better explanation/reason than "these people have poor impulse control because of the environment in which they were raised"; the environment is not the cause of the poor outcomes, the poor impulse control is the cause, and pointing out the cause shows a path to correcting the issue.

[thfuran]

>the environment is not the cause of the poor outcomes

It's not the proximate cause, but that doesn't mean it is in no way causative.

>and pointing out the cause shows a path to correcting the issue

Yes, it can often be most efficient to address root causes.

[naasking]

Yes, it's causative in the same sense that the formation of our solar system eventually caused me to write this reply.

And I agree that it's typically most efficient to address root causes, but there's a sleight of hand going on here. Note how your post correctly pointed out that environment influences a person's actions where I said poor impulse control causes poor outcomes. There are causal factors in both cases, but clearly there is a clear and direct causal link in the latter and a diffuse set of uncertain possible causes in the former.

I would not call environment a root cause in this case unless you can actually narrow down the specific source that causes poor impulse control (some of it is genetic and thus ineliminable).

[thfuran]

>it's causative in the same sense that the formation of our solar system eventually caused me to write this reply.

More like in the sense that smoking causes cancer.