Customer Reviews

IQ and Global Inequality

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This new book by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen is an elaboration and extension of their IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002) in which they showed that IQ scores correlated around 0.70 with per capita income and rates of economic development in over 81 countries.

This was a very bold claim. The cause of national differences in wealth is one of the major problems in economics. Hundreds of books have been written on the subject and several journals are devoted to it. Only very rarely is it ever suggested that national differences in intelligence help determine why some nations are so rich while others are so poor.

In my view, Lynn and Vanhanen have made what is arguably the most important contribution to economic understanding since Adam Smith showed that free markets promote economic development.

They have shown also that national IQs explain much of the variation between nations in a wide range of economic and social phenomena--not just income levels.

Their book extends the explanatory power of the concept of intelligence in a way that makes a major contribution to the integration of psychology with the other social sciences.

In advancing their intelligence theory, Lynn and Vanhanen begin by noting that economists usually regard it as axiomatic that all peoples of the world have the same intelligence.

The assumption that the average level of intelligence is the same in all nations is seriously wrong. Lynn and Vanhanen have examined the matter. They found huge national differences in intelligence. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have average IQs of 67. Some of the "Asian Tiger" nations of the Pacific Rim average out at 105.

For perspective, the reader might note that an IQ of 70 is the lower limit for primary school educability, and an IQ of 105 the lower limit for College-level (although of course these can always be "dumbed down."

In IQ & Global Inequality, Lynn and Vanhanen have increased the number of countries for which they have calculated measured IQs from 81 to 113. They show that in the new larger sample of 113 countries the correlation between IQ and per capita income for 2002 is 0.68, virtually identical to the correlation reported in their earlier book.

A path model in which genes and environment both contribute equally (0.50) to national IQs allows a determination of economic growth (0.71) from 1500 to 2000. These national differences in the rate of economic growth are almost entirely responsible for the contemporary differences in per capita income (0.98). The model also posits that national IQs are determinants of a number of social phenomena such as adult literacy (0.64), enrolment in tertiary education (0.75), life expectancy (0.77), and democratisation (0.57).

Some of these phenomena have positive feedback relationships. For instance, nations whose populations have high IQs have high per capita incomes, which enable them to provide high quality nutrition, education, and health care for their children, and these enhance their children's intelligence. This is the principle of genotype-environment correlation applied to national populations.

IQ & Global Inequality addresses more fundamentally the question of the causes of national differences in intelligence. It concludes that these depend on the racial composition of the populations. Thus, the 6 East Asian nations (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore) all have IQs in the range of 105 to 108. The 29 European nations all have IQs in the range of 92 to 102, while the 19 nations of sub-Saharan Africa all have IQs in the range of 59 to 73. Thus there is remarkable consistency in the IQs of nations when these are classified into racial clusters.

Like many important discoveries in science, it seems obvious in retrospect that these national differences in intelligence must inevitably determine differences in economic development. Indeed, it seems astonishing that no-one had hitherto advanced this simple thesis, even before the recent Dark Age of Political Correctness closed in.

(Co-authored by Albert Somit and Steven Peterson)

IQ and Global Inequality is a sequel to the authors' earlier IQ and the Wealth of Nations wherein they argued that "...national differences in intelligence are an important factor contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth" (p.2). Lynn and Vanhanen here turn their attention from wealth to national differences in development and to differing levels of national economic, social and political achievement (And we have spoken ourselves of the role of evolution in political achievement, specifically the development of democracy. See, for instance, our "The Failure of Democratic Nation Building").

They have also expanded the scope of the study: In 2002, they gave "measured IQ" for 81 nations, they now offer measured IQ for 113 countries and "estimated" IQ for another 79; the number of countries for which development data are presented has also been increased, from 185 in 2002 to 192 in 2006. The basic findings, however, remain unchanged: As the authors staunchly reaffirm in their final conclusion, "...the major cause of global inequalities can be traced to the diversity of human aptitudes and especially to significant differences in the mental abilities of nations measured by national IQ" (p. 275). In short, that the difference in intelligence between the populations of affluent and of impoverished nations is a major - but not the only - cause of that economic inequality. Put even more bluntly, that nations differ in wealth in large part because their populations differ in intelligence. This book, we can safely predict, will receive a mixed reception. However, we commend the authors for their intellectual courage and for their genuine effort to establish the statistical relationships that they theorize, using real data.

Their first task is to present data showing that intelligence is heritable, and here they rely heavily, though not entirely, on studies of twins conducted in a near dozen countries. They then present several nation-by-nation studies indicating, respectively, that income, educational attainment, and social status are also heritable. Since "...intelligence, earnings, educational attainment, and socioeconomic status all have moderate to high heritabilities within nations," they feel safely in concluding that "... intelligence and earnings have at least a moderate heritability between nations" (pp. 235-236).

Why do nations differ from one another in these respects? Messrs. Lynn and Vanhanen leap from the frying pan into the fire -"The genetic basis for national differences in intelligence lies in the racial identity of the populations" (p.236). Drawing heavily on published research by Prof. Lynn, they present (and discuss at some length) 9 tables dealing with "The intelligence of nations categorized by race "(p. 238), the "National IQs in Latin America and the Caribbean predicted from racial composition of the population," (p. 241), and (and we would say needlessly) "Race differences in brain size (cc) and intelligence"(p. 243).

In all fairness, we should promptly add, the authors end their discussion of racial differences by reminding the reader that, as noted above, they "... also believe that environmental factors (for instance, `sub-optimal nutrition and poor health') contribute to the national differences in intelligence"

"National differences in intelligence," the authors insist, "are an important factor contributing to differences in national wealth and rates of economic growth." Have the authors made a plausible case? That, the reader must judge for him or herself.

In conclusion, though, we should mention one issue not really addressed in the book. As we have recently seen, some nations -- the "Asian Tigers" immediately come to mind -- have achieved truly striking gains in national wealth within the course of little more than a single generation. Given the authors' contention that national IQ is heritable and their basic thesis that "... national IQ is the most powerful explanatory variable. . .in accounting for differences in national wealth. . .," how, then, would they explain this phenomenon? That explanation, too, may have significant policy implications.

Lynn and Vanhanen's claim that national average IQ is a most reliable predictor of various national quality of life is, in my opinion, that most plausible hypothesis in social sciences presented ever. Chinese economic progress after their adoption of capitalism as the factory of the world in the 21st century may well be one of the impeccable evidence. It is truly amazing that no professional economists so far have advanced this simple idea even though I know the existence of the blizzard of PC movement in the U.S.

One thing that I personally would like those who understand IQ controversy fully to think about is that, although East Asians have 105 IQ points on average, most of modern math and sciences have been developed by Europeans, who have 100 IQ points on average. There seems to exist a small inconsistency here. My guess is that, as the former U. Penn professor, Vining reported on a paper (which I forgot for exact time and place unfortunately), European Caucasians have higher variance as for IQ points among other psychological traits. Therefore, super-smart people tend to be born among Europeans and hence modern civilization has been advanced in Europe. I think this is still articulately shown in the number of Nobel laureates and Fields medalists

One more puzzle is the Indian national IQ points estimated around 80. Other things aside, this is somewhat bewildering to me that Ramanujan and other famous mathematicians and statisticians are Indians when we look at the field. Also many Indians, including famous Adobe founder, are known to be very good at computer programming which consist mostly of dense logic.

Can someone suggest anything on this? BTW, although I am genetically Japanese living in Japan, I love scientific truth and hate nationalism. Thank you in advance.

Great book, read it with interest and enthusiasm. Very informative. Made me see things from a completely new viewpoint. I would however recommend any reader to keep a critical standpoint as the hen and the egg issue arise at certain points throughout the book. However, I think that the the authors generally do a very good job evidencing their theories.

I am not an economist. I have been frustrated by the continual fuzzy, quasi-analytical approach I have read when reading in this field. Finally, someone "puts the math where their mouth is". This is a fabulous, insightful piece of work. The authors made some, but by no mean reckless, extensions in thought, but backed up by good observations.
This is going to be a controversial piece of work due to people reading too much into what the authors actually say. I am giddy over the follow-up to the book, IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
Bravo.

This book was great! He uses scientific twin studies, graphs, and studeis to prove his views. This book is very persuasive and utilizes science to prove eugenics would be beneficial.

[Written in December, 2006]

Though hailed by the loyal J. Philippe Rushton as "arguably the greatest contribution to economic understanding since Adam Smith," the prospect of a Nobel Prize for race-realist Emeritus Professor Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (the father of Finland's prime minister) and their mail-order-published book is sadly remote. It is not just that this book largely repeats, with slight extensions (e.g. getting Israeli IQ up from 94 to 95) the review already provided in the authors' 2002 IQ and the Wealth of Nations. The main problem is the authors' failure to solve convincingly, or even decisively the problem of which of their national variables (IQ, literacy, take-up of tertiary education, health, longevity, wealth, income etc.) are actually causing which.

The authors provide many `regression coefficients' (the favoured technique of econometricians): but regressions only give the degree to which one variable (or more) can be used to calculate others within a data set; and of course, in L&V's data set, IQ `predicts' wealth but wealth also `predicts' IQ. Thus the authors stumble into a morass of "positive feedback loops" and fall into the ultimate scientific fallacy (normally appealing chiefly to desperately environmentalistic proponents of `complex interaction effects') that X causes Y and Y causes X - invariably a clear sign that more work is urgently necessary.

What should that work be? Well, the first task is to pinpoint X-Y relations where causation can, within reason, only go one way. Thus Touhey (1972, Br.J.soc.clin.Psychol.) found that IQ was strongly related (r = .50) to whether adult testees had in their lives been upwardly or downwardly socially mobile from their fathers' occupational levels - a relationship only readily explicable by saying that IQ causes upward social mobility (for IQ itself changes little from age 8 and, of necessity, the left's beloved variable of SES does not explain inter-generational mobility). Likewise, I pointed out (in a 2002 review of IQ&WoN at Amazon Books) that national IQs collected around 1980 were correlated with countries' economic advance (or, in African cases, economic decline) over 1983-1996: "Of the world's 21 countries which steadily tripled their GDP from 1983 through 1990 and 1993 to 1996, none was on or near the African mainland; whereas of the 27 countries whose GDP decreased by 50%, ten were African (Angola, Burkina Faso, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Madagascar, Somalia, Sudan, Zambia and Sao Tome & Principe)." It would plainly be bizarre to envisage backward causation from such changes to IQ. Yet Lynn & Vanhanen largely decline to focus on such crucial exercises. Most surprisingly of all, they make no use of factor analysis - a technique ideally suited in non-experimental data to identifying the most likely causal factors among the variables as a whole, in this case certainly headed up by a big factor highly loaded by g but with substantial loadings for all the other national variables.

Amidst their 400 pages of stumbling (pretty repetitiously) around the issue of causation, the authors occasionally show glimmers of appreciation of the true picture: e. g. the correlations between national g and longevity are spectacularly high (around .80) - indicating a relation which can hardly be explained by anything other than g being causal to longevity (doubtless via self-chosen `lifestyle' features). But few journalists and no Marxite critics will have the patience to wade through the authors' inconclusive meanderings -- the indecisiveness of which perhaps reflects disagreements between the authors, for Lynn's own writing is normally a model of clarity.

All this borders on tragedy, for these hard-working, knowledgeable and fair-minded authors supply an excellent path analysis (on p. 248 of the book) which makes entirely clear a most plausible hypothesis in which national IQ, economic freedom (i. e. capitalism) and natural resources all contribute causally to `measures of human conditions' - with IQ as the main contributor (as also envisaged in IQ&WoN). Sadly, the surrounding text does little to explain how the model was derived or whether it is or is not held to be the model of causation that would be favoured by the authors if they could put their "positive feedback loops" behind them. Thus I stand by what I said in 2002: that L&V's work could prove to be of really great significance; but, for the moment, it needs a sympathetic and methodologically informed reader - and the media-dominating peecee `liberal'-left will gladly accept L&V's lame `loops' of causation and denials of full-blown hereditarianism and settle for ignoring the volume, as they ignored IQ&WoN in 2002.

Lastly, it is notable that the authors continue with their 2002 idea that it would be a good idea to raise African IQ (whether via their own favourite of improved nutrition [strangely they make no mention of remedying iodine deficiency], or via whatever vast new sums of money from UK Chancellor Dr Gordon Brown and his neosocialist ilk, or perhaps via the polygamy recommended for Africans by William McDougall). Yet the Africans who have done best over the past 300 years are surely the slaves who were lifted out to the USA - where their economic level is far higher and even their IQ (c. 85) is today a substantial improvement on that of Black people in Africa (c. 70) despite these Americanized slaves having been originally the criminal riff-raff of their Black societies, which, with encouragement from Muslim traders, decided to sell them off. The hard conditions of the American plantations did, over the years, for Blacks what the rigours of Australia did for the progeny of England's petty criminals. Perhaps the best Africans can hope for is that the Chinese (whose 1970s experiments in Malawi etc. came to grief in oceans of mutual misunderstanding, but who are now desperate for natural resources and no longer committed to egalitarian ideology) will in future take the trouble somehow to enslave Blacks once more. If such a process replicated the American success story for Blacks, it would suggest that people of all start-out levels of IQ can flourish economically over time in a well-run hierarchy - a possibility in which L&V are strangely uninterested.

The author has compiled significant data on IQ differences which do help explain the relative progress of societies in the Ice Ages and during the movement to agrarian communities from hunter-gatherers. However, during the last 3,000 years I believe that IQ has played a lesser role as the harsh realities of survival have been softened by civilization. And, the types of competency needed to survive in modern societies has become less an intellectual matter and more an ability in people skills, practical decison-making, and the prudence to control emotions and resist impulsive behavior.

3,000 years ago there were over ten civilizations scattered around the world that could have developed into modern economic superpowers, but the only one that did grew out of the Judeo-Greek world, and gradually moved north-west into Western Europe. IQ differences do not explain that--especially when you know that Asians were well up the IQ scale. Some other factors must have been at work.

The European constant progress over the last thousand years was not monolithic, but leapfrogged from one area to another--from Rome to Venice and Florence, then to Holland, Scotland, England and America. Each stepping stone along the way was surpassed by subsequent societies that somehow managed to grow faster. The IQ's in Scotland were not much different from Holland so why the changes?

The answer lies partly in whether a person with high IQ has the opportunity to apply his talent. In the highly stratified and structured Oriental Empires those with high IQ's were not generally allowed to think freely. Even within Europe, the IQ's of Polish and Russian peasants were wasted under a feudal system of servitude. It was only in the ever-changing atmosphere of Western Europe city-states that IQ's mattered. Wherever there was an enclave that allowed freedom of thought, and physical safety (safety for life and limb--and property) then the genius of a people was unleashed. If they happened to have a high average IQ so much the better, but that advantage was dwarfed by the vital asset of safety and freedom.

This recognition of freedom of thought explains why China went through cycles of ups and downs. When The Ming dynasty regained control in 1400AD and shut down their fleet (and thinking) they closed the minds and future of their people for centuries. When Islam became solidly fundamentalist around 1100 AD they shut the door on their past progress. And the economic progress of Singapore, Dubai, and Hong Kong show that an open free economy trumps IQ. Mainland Chinese trailed those nations because of their closed minds--even though they had comparable IQs.

The author Lynn has suggested in some books that not only IQ but conscientiousness and attitude play a role. Clearly a work oriented culture like Calvinist Holland and Puritan New England played a role comparable to an IQ advantage for their people and helps explain their superior performance. That view endorses my belief in the need to measure a person's "total competency" and not just memory and test-taking types of skills that are revealed by the IQ tests.

I enjoyed Lynn's book for it does provide a lot of interesting material but I would have liked it more if he had included more material about the other non-IQ mental characteristics that have impacted human progress. There are many new discoveries in neurology that give a broader understanding of what makes for success and what defines an "intelligent" person; without that information, this book cannot give a full picture of its subject matter.

We like to feel superior to other nations and find all kinds of ways to justify it. I don't think there is another country in the world that has placed money in the center of its culture like we have, and focusing on anything leads to achieving results. I am a banker and have known many, way too many, rich people who are rather mediocre intellectually. If you come from a background sharing the view that "money is evil" or "if you focus on money, you are not spiritual enough", you can be brilliant and still be poor. Have you ever met Mensa members? They all have extremely high IQ, but some of them are very ordinary looking and not necessarily wealthy. Finally, countries' financial situations change with time. Rome used to be a great power long time ago, but that does not mean Italians have a higher IQ.

Well atleast it's better than the book "race and intelligence", but
both book are very superficial and investigates "human evolution" like old nazis. First of all you can't strict apply the rules of evolution to humans
because we have a brain that lies on top of "genetical rules" that applies to animals. Just go outside and observe the real world and you will soon discover that evolution doesnt apply to our thinking.

It's worth to mention that nobody of the authors have a background in mathematics nor evolutionary biology which I do.

Never the less it's interesting to investigate why some countries are poor
and some are rich. However they only focus on IQ and no other mental attributes. They give the illusion of that our progresse is a result of many people with a relative higher IQ than other groups, which isn't the case.

Well it's not a very good book, but might be worth reading if you are interested in superficial statistics and speculative theory.