Customer Reviews

IQ and the Wealth of Nations

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The book's content is irresistible - at its heart is a table of the average IQ scores of 81 different countries, drawn from studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The national average IQs range from 107 for Hong Kong to 59 for Equatorial Guinea.

Lynn and Vanhanen benchmarked their IQ results so that Britain is 100. America scores 98 on this scale, and the world average is 90. IQ's are assumed to form a normal probability distribution ("bell curve") with the standard deviation set at 15. Here are a few examples:

Nation Avg. IQ
Eq. Guinea 59
Nigeria 67
Barbados 78
Guatemala 79
India 81
Iraq 87
Mexico 87
Argentina 96
US 98
China 100
UK 100
Italy 102
Japan 105
Hong Kong 107

Admit it, you want to know what the rest of the table says! Beyond satisfying sheer curiosity, though, the strong correlation between IQ and the wealth of nations is of world-historical importance. From now on, no public intellectual can seriously claim to be attempting to understand how the world works unless he takes IQ into account.

How much can we trust these IQ results?

As soon as I received the book, I turned to Appendix 1, where Lynn and Vanhanen describe all 168 national IQ studies they've found - an average of just over two per country.

Are the results internally consistent? In other words, when there are multiple studies for a single country, do they tend to give roughly the same answer?

I expected a sizable amount of internal divergence. I spent 18 years in the marketing research industry, so I know how expensive it is to come up with a nationally representative sample. Further, Lynn and Vanhanen use results from quite different IQ tests. They rely most on the non-verbal Raven's Progressive Matrices, which were designed to be used across cultures, even by illiterates. Yet, they also have a lot of results from the Wechsler exams, which are more culture dependent - the Wechsler include a vocabulary subtest, for example. And they report results from other IQ tests, including a few from the oddball Goodenough-Harris Draw-A-Man test. Also, sample sizes vary dramatically, from a few dozen in some obscure countries to 64,000 for one American study. Finally, some studies were of children, others of adults.

This doesn't sound promising. Nevertheless, the results show a high degree of internal consistency. Here are the first eight countries for which they have multiple scores:

Argentina: 93 and 98
Australia: 97, 98, and 99
Austria: 101, 103
Belgium: 99, 103, 98
Brazil: 88, 84, 90, and 85
Bulgaria: 94, 91
China: 100, 92.5, 103.4
Democratic Republic of Congo: 73, 72

That's not bad at all. In fact, leaving aside China, the results are remarkably consistent. There are, of course, a few countries for which different studies came up with quite divergent results, especially Poland, where the two scores Lynn and Vanhanen found were 92 and 106. Still, the correlation among results when there are two or more studies for a country is a striking 0.94.

You shouldn't take every score on faith. The reported IQ for Israel (only 94????!!!) has elicited much criticism. Lynn has replied that he wanted to publish the data as he found it, even if some of it looked implausible. His hope is to encourage further research to resolve seeming anomalies.

The IQ structures of the two giga-countries, China and India, demand more intense study, in part because the future history of the world will hinge in no small part on their endowments of human capital. The demography of India is especially complex due to its caste system, which resembles Jim Crow on steroids and acid. By discouraging intermarriage, caste has subdivided the Indian people into an incredible number of micro-races. In India, according to the dean of population genetics, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, "The total number of endogamous communities today is around 43,000..." We know that some of those communities - such as the Zoroastrian Parsees of Bombay - are exceptionally intelligent.

But we can't say with any confidence what is the long run IQ potential of Indians overall. Their current IQ score (81) is low, especially compared to China (100), the other country with hundreds of millions of poor peasants. Yet, keep in mind just how narrow life in rural India was for so long. In 1952, on the fifth anniversary of independence, the Indian government commissioned a survey to find out if the average Indian villager had heard yet that the British had gone. The study was quietly cancelled when early results showed that the average villager had never heard that the British had ever arrived!

It appears likely that some combination of malnutrition, disease, inbreeding, lack of education, lack of mental stimulation, lack of familiarity with abstract reasoning and so forth can keep people from reaching their genetic potential for IQ. Lynn himself did early studies demonstrating that malnutrition drives down IQ. The co-authors conclude their book by recommending that

"The rich countries' economic aid programs for the poor countries should be continued and some of these should be directed at attempting to increase the intelligence levels of the populations of the poorer countries by improvements in nutrition and the like."

A clear example of how a bad environment can hurt IQ can be seen in the IQ scores for sub-Saharan African countries. They average only around 70. In contrast, African-Americans average about 85. It appears unlikely that African-Americans' white admixture can account for most of this 15-point gap because they are only around 17%-18% white on average, according to the latest genetic research. (Thus African-Americans white genes probably couldn't account for more than 3 points of the gap between African-Americans and African-Africans.) This suggests that the harshness of life in Africa might be cutting ten points or more off African IQ scores.

Similarly, West Africans are significantly shorter in height than their distant cousins in America, most likely due to malnutrition and infections. The two African-born NBA superstars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo, are both from the wa-benzi [people of the (Mercedes ) Benz]upper class. Only the elite in Africa gets enough food and health care to grow up to be NBA centers.

This also implies that African-Americans might be able to achieve higher IQs too, although the environmental gap between white Americans and black Americans appears to be much smaller than between black Americans and black Africans. As I pointed out in VDARE in 2000, the most promising avenue for improving African-Americans' IQs is by promoting breastfeeding among blacks mothers, who nurse their babies at much lower rates than whites.

In fact, we know that IQ is not completely fixed over time because raw test scores have been rising for decades, about 2 to 3 points per decade. To counteract this, the IQ test-making firms periodically make it harder - in absolute terms - to achieve a score of 100. Lynn was possibly the first scientist to make this phenomenon widely known, although New Zealand political scientist James Flynn has gotten more credit for this recently. And, indeed, Lynn and Vanhanen scrupulously adjust the test results in their book to account for when each test was taken.

This book must be a good candidate for being the most important book of the 21st century. British psychologist Richard Lynn and Finnish political scientist Tatu Vanhanen find that recent IQ data from scores of countries world-wide show really strong correlations, of around r = .65, with national prosperity -- whether Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated for 1820 or for the 1990s. Quite contrary to the theorizing of most Western economists of the past fifty years, the underdeveloped (later, 'developing') countries of fifty years ago have not generally closed the gap with the help of ongoing Western handouts and advice. Clearly, several East Asian countries have in that time made enormous strides -- as may also happen soon in the ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe; but in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa (i.e. largely Black Africa), mean IQ estimates hover around 70 and progress has been slight. 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).

Yet will L&V prove persuasive about causation? Doubters will raise four particular problems.
First, IQ and the Wealth of Nations is published by an American mail order house which charges heavily for the book. Terrorized by the politically correct, mainstream Western 'publishers' have for ten years been entirely unwilling to bring out books that touch on race - whether by Arthur Jensen, Phil Rushton or myself. Recently, it turned out that top psychologist Steven Pinker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who had converted to hereditarianism after hearing from friends how a second child was often very different from a first, felt he had to remove a chapter about race from the final draft of his new pro-heredity book, The Blank Slate. L&V are not alone in finding themselves up against the Zeitgeist, and the reception of their book has not so far been auspicious. L&V's reply will have to be that such repression indicates that the liberal-left consensus (which in 1950 persuaded the United Nations to declare all races to be of equal intelligence) is a hysteria that must one day lift.

Secondly, some will doubtless try to quibble with the IQ estimates that are the central novelty of IQ and the Wealth of Nations. L&V typically present some three 'normative' IQ studies for each of the countries they discuss; they do not provide details of social sampling; and they estimate IQ's for some nations by taking the average of the IQs in neighbouring countries - e.g. crediting Afghanistan with IQ 83 as an average of India's 81 and Iran's 84. Surprisingly, L&V maintain that the mean IQ in Israel is only 94 - ignoring the possibility that Sephardic Jews, like other Africans, may have special deficits in the visuo-spatial abilities that are needed to do well on 'culture-fair' intelligence tests like the famous Raven's Matrices. None of this is ideal. However, L&V have a very strong reply from both the general consistency of their IQ estimates and the sheer strength of IQ's correlations with national productivity. If workers had seriously confounded their assessments of national IQ, L&V would simply have had to present the usual miserably low correlations of around .25 that obtain throughout psychology and the social sciences. As it is, L&V have plainly struck gold.

Thirdly, there is the question of cause and effect. Can L&V convince us that IQ actually causes national wealth, rather than vice versa? The literature on the causal importance of IQ is only partially covered here, and L&V settle rather easily for the view that IQ and wealth will both tend to cause each other. This concession will weaken their case in the eyes of those who already deplore the idea that IQ is causal. L&V would have done better to point to the exceedingly slight IQ advantages accruing to Black children in the USA even when their fathers are seriously rich, and to the failure of the American Black-White gap in intelligence to decrease despite many billions of American dollars being thrown at the problem for the past forty years. Even a century of national impoverishment does not lower IQ -- as shown by the cases of mainland China, Poland and Russia in L&V's own data. By contrast, IQ correlates .50 with individual upward social mobility, relative to the position of the testee's father (Touhey, 1972). The simple truth is that a normal national IQ is necessary though not sufficient for prosperity; and that a low IQ holds whole countries back even if individuals can compensate for dullness by good looks or hard work. Neglecting such points, as also the full range of arguments that race differences are of substantially genetic origin, L&V will have partly themselves to blame if their book is set aside.

Lastly, L&V show remarkable modesty about the implications of their findings. This may have been intended as placatory; but it, too, will win them few friends. Rather than stress the need for eugenics in Africa, L&V conclude their book with two bizarrely half-hearted recommendations. The first is that the West should recognize continuing IQ differences and thus continue pumping subsidies into Africa as a matter of "ethical obligation." The second is that some fraction of this conscience money should be spent not on eugenics but on "improvements in nutrition and the like." No change there, then, for this is what the West has been doing ever since it abandoned the responsible idea of empire! It is remarkable that L&V should have troubled to write a 'controversial' book which cannot be published by a mainstream publisher only to come to such feeble practical recommendations. L&V have provided a way of forgetting their book which social-environmentalist ideologues will be desperately eager to take.

Our society forms social policy, most recently the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action in Michigan, on the premise that all racial groups are equal. Not Lincoln's "all men are equal under the law" but "all men are equal".

We observe inequality in every aspect of life, most notably educational achievement and financial status. If, as society assumes, all people are equally capable of achievement, there has to be a conspiracy holding some peoples down. And what is it? White racism, they say, as if it could not be more obvious. Well hidden, but still manifest in "low expectations" and "subtle disparagement" etc. We white guys have broad shoulders, but jeez, it gets old after a while. Blacks and liberals have such low opinions of our fundamental morality, we descendants of the abolitionists who freed the slaves and were active partners of the NAACP over the years. It could start to affect our self esteem.

A similar conspiracy theory appears at the international level. African countries supposedly remain poor because they have been exploited by more advanced nations. Their attempts at industrialization supposedly fall victim to greedy foreign companies through a scheme of "globalization" that values them only for their raw materials and cheap labor. Just as the racism theory holds that we white guys are in cahoots to hold minorities down, this one assumes an evil alliance among large companies and advanced countries to depress the market value of the labor and raw materials produced by developing countries. Oppression is a rhetorical staple at the U.N.

It has been almost 10 years since "The Bell Curve" appeared. Since that time many other books have appeared that appear to support its arguments that peoples are different in statistically significant ways, among them "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", "The g factor," "Race, Evolution and Behavior," "Genes, Peoples and Languages," and Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate."

As Pinker so eloquently reports, these books have been vilified by academics. Typical is Peter Irons writing in "Jim Crow's Children" that "virtually all reputable scholars reject claims, most recently leveled by Richard Herrenstein and Charles Murray.." or Hugh Price disparaging "scientifically discredited" theories of intelligence in "Achievement Matters" or Tom Wicker writing in "Tragic Failure" that "...the Bell Curve... received much condemnation as pseudoscience." Strikingly absent from all these well annotated books are footnotes in support of these claims. Who are these "reputable scholars" who have "discredited" these books? Peter Irons offers one name, that of Richard Nisbett, who has authored no books on the subject but does post a 16-page (triple-spaced) bit on his web site. Price and Wicker offer none. The most prominent debunker, Stephen Jay Gould in "The Mismeasure of Man," rather than offering a statistical rebuttal, attacks the premise that statistical analysis is meaningful. He does, of course, cite a few studies that support his case.

The policy implications are vast. If all peoples are equally capable we must find and do away with whatever prejudices are holding some back. If all peoples are not equal we have to fall back a century or so and reconsider the white man's burden. What is the obligation of more richly endowed individuals and nations to the less richly endowed? If society is a Darwinist struggle between equally capable combatants, some simply more industrious than others, one would not have too much sympathy for the losers. If the struggle is truly unequal the humanitarian thing to do is to redistribute wealth. It is probably also the smart thing to do -- buy peace. Give Marx partial credit, though redistributing all of it as under Communism proved to be a disaster. Amy Chua's recommends in "World on Fire" that "market dominant minorities" like Jews and Chinese curry favor by giving back to their adoptive countries.

Whatever the story, policy should be based on knowledge. Would some "reputable scholar" please step forward to poke holes in Messrs. Lynn and VanHansen's argument? If that proves impossible the U.N. might have to take their arguments into consideration. Imagine what it would do to that body's self esteem.

This brilliantly conceived, superbly-written, path-breaking book, does for the global study of economic prosperity what Herrnstein and Murray's (1994) The Bell Curve did for the USA. IQ and the Wealth of Nations examines IQ scores and economic indicators in 185 nations. It shows that national differences in wealth are explained first, by the intelligence levels of the populations; second, by whether the countries have market or socialist economies; and finally, by unique circumstances such as, in the case of Qatar, by sitting atop a sea of oil.

One striking fact is that the average national IQ of the world is 90. Few nations have IQs equal or near the British average of 100 (less than 20%). The highest average IQs are found among the Oriental nations of North East Asia (IQ = 104), followed by the European nations (IQ = 98), and the mainly White populations of North America and Australasia (IQ = 98), the nations of South and Southwest Asia from the Middle East through Turkey to India and Malaysia (IQ = 87), the nations of South East Asia and the Pacific Islands (IQ = 86), the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean (IQ = 85), and finally by the nations of Africa (IQ = 70). Because many nations have IQs of 90 or less (almost 50%), this poses a serious problem if the book's conclusion that IQ = 90 forms the threshold for a technological economy is correct. IQs can vary greatly within a geographic region. In Latin America and the Caribbean, IQs range from 72 in Jamaica to 96 in Argentina and Uruguay, and appear to be due to the racial and ethnic make-up of the populations.

... Mean national IQ correlates 0.71 with per capita Gross National Product (GNP) for 1998, and 0.76 with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 1998, and that national IQs predict both long term (1820-1922) and short term (1950-90; 1976-1998) economic growth rates measured variously by per capita GNP and GDP (mean rs ~ 0.60). Lynn and Vanhanen prove that the widespread though rarely stated assumption of economists and political scientists that all peoples and nations have the same average IQ is wildly wrong. They document that IQs predate earnings, are heritable, and are stable from age 5 onwards, and predict educational level and many other positive outcomes as evidence that IQ is the cause, not antecedent. The take home message of IQ and the Wealth of Nations is that national differences in IQ are here to stay and so is the gap between the rich and the poor nations.

Anyone who spends time watching TV news or reading any publication is struck by the amount of poverty and uneven development in the world. According the U.S. World Factbook, many nation in Africa have life expectancy little above 40 years old. Half of the population of India is illiterate and a majority of the populations of China still live in the rural countryside with annual incomes in the hundreds of dollars.

What causes the great differences in wealth and poverty between the world's nations. I personally have wondered many of these questions over the years, as I am sure many others, of the wealth and poverty of nations. That's why Professor Lynn and Professor Vanhanen book seems to be a bolt of lightning out of the blue on the issue of Wealth of Poverty of Nations. Book is pricey but definitely worth the cost.

The Wealth of Nations can be assessed on three areas:

1. Natural Resources. Land, Oil, Diamond, Agriculture, Fishing, etc.
2. Planned versus Market Economies. Planned, controlled economies have brought poverty to North Korea, Russia, Eastern Europe, Cuba, China. Professor Lynn compares North to South Korea where income in south is 15 times higher than the north. In fact, there is now famine in North Korea.
3. National IQ of population.

IQ and Wealth of Nations dwells on the third component between National IQ and Economic Development. The author's ideas are original and are to be commended for a doing a full academic study.

The UK IQ of 100 is used as standard measure. The lowest measured is in Guinea (IQ, 59), Nigeria (IQ, 67) and highest in Japan (IQ, 105) and Hong Kong (IQ, 107).

Of note, readers will find IQ interesting if not debatable such as India (IQ, 81) Iraq (IQ, 87) Mexico (IQ, 87) US (IQ, 98) and Israel (IQ, 94). You would think India with so many engineers would have a higher IQ.

The highest average IQs are of the East Asian nations of North East Asia (IQ, 104), European nations (IQ, 98), and white populations of North America and Australasia (IQ, 98), South and Southwest Asia from the Middle East through Turkey to India and Malaysia (IQ, 87), South East Asia and the Pacific Islands (IQ, 86), Latin America and the Caribbean (IQ, 85), and Africa (IQ, 70).

Many readers of the 1994 The Bell Curve will be interested in the authors' finding of IQ of 70 for the native African population in Africa. The African-American IQ is usually 85 in U.S., Jamaica (IQ, 72). The Africans in U.S. have a higher IQ of 85 compared to Africa of 70. This will be of note to historians.

Of concern to American reader are the IQ of it's neighboring countries. Canada (97), Mexico (87), Cuba (85), Jamaica (72), Haiti (72) in the news Russia (96) Afghanistan (83). The numbers may be incorrect but nonetheless are worthy areas of debate and data for additional research.

Of China (100) and India (81), two nations in the billion people range affecting the future of the world. China (IQ, 100) compared with U.S.A. (98). China has five times as many people as U.S. The IQ of 100 may be depressed because of poverty. If it is 107 like the Chinese in Hong Kong, China seems to be a nation destined to rule the 21st. century. China has ten times more people than Japan (IQ, 105).

The IQ on China seems to be of world-historical, world-economic importance if they have such a high IQ. Sitting here in Austin, Texas, this bit of information makes me think. Not will they provide cheap labor, they will also provide the brains for the world.

The author posits an IQ of 90 is needed for a technology-based society. Only 20% of the world population have IQ above 90. Africa (IQ, 70) and India (IQ, 81), Latin America (IQ, 85) raises the impossibility of technical development there. This is depressing news. People who work in aiding the Third World really needs to look at these IQ numbers. If the IQ of 70 is correct for Africa, there going to be endless poverty.

Having read the book twice, this book really raises unsettling questions about he future of the world. Professor Lynn is expert on IQ with 20 years of scholarly research behind him. Both are not cranks nor pseudo-scientist. Both are professor-academics laying out an academic argument.

This maybe the book of the decade if not century. It raises unsettling, alarming, incredible, amazing, tough questions. Has the "missing element" in economic development been IQ after all. Will China (IQ, 100 or 107) dominate the world. Is IQ of Africa 70. Is the world average IQ equal to 90 and only 20% of the world's population above 100. Are nations doomed to poverty because of their IQ. More research and studies to confirm or deny the IQ and theories in this book is needed.

This book is a must buy, must read and must book for talk and analysis. Granted this is the first scholarly analysis of IQ and world development. Presumably more books and articles will follow and the IQ of individual nations will be researched and debated.

I urge all readers to buy book and read it for themselves. It will keep you thinking for a long, long time as it did for me. If the IQ numbers correlate with economic development, this maybe the book of the decade. Period.

Many must curious to know the IQ of all the countries mentioned in book. Here's preview. Average IQ for all 165 nations. Hong Kong (107) is highest. Israel is 94, Africa is at 70. GDP is current year 2000 GDP.

Fitted is GDP as would be indicated by national IQ. For example, China, instead of GDP of 3,000, it would be at 16,000. These numbers are explained in detail in book and correlations are made. This is good peek, buy the book and read the full details and judge for yourself. The high price is worth read.

Country average IQ GDP fitted GDP
Hong Kong 107 20,763 19,817
Korea, South 106 13,478 19,298
Japan 105 23,257 18,779
Taiwan 104 13,000 18,260
Singapore 103 24,210 17,740
Austria 102 23,166 17,221
Germany 102 22,169 17,221
Italy 102 20,585 17,221
Netherlands 102 22,176 17,221
Sweden 101 20,659 16,702
Switzerland 101 25,512 16,702
Belgium 100 23,223 16,183
China 100 3,105 16,183

NewZealand 100 17,288 16,183
U. Kingdom 100 20,336 16,183
Hungary 99 10,232 15,664
Poland 99 7,619 15,664
Australia 98 22,452 15,145
Denmark 98 24,218 15,145
France 98 21,175 15,145
Norway 98 26,342 15,145
United States 98 29,605 15,145
Canada 97 23,582 14,626
Czech Republic 97 12,362 14,626
Finland 97 20,847 14,626
Spain 97 16,212 14,626
Argentina 96 12,013 14,107
Russia 96 6,460 14,107
Slovakia 96 9,699 14,107
Uruguay 96 8,623 14,107
Portugal 95 14,701 13,589
Slovenia 95 14,293 13,588
Israel 94 17,301 13,069
Romania 94 5,648 13,069
Bulgaria 93 4,809 12,550
Ireland 93 21,482 12,550
Greece 92 13,943 12,031
Malaysia 92 8,137 12,031
Thailand 91 5,456 11,512
Croatia 90 6,749 10,993
Peru 90 4,282 10,993
Turkey 90 6,422 10,993
Colombia 89 6,006 10,474
Indonesia 89 2,651 10,474
Suri name 89 5,161 10,474
Brazil 87 6,625 9,436
Iraq 87 3,197 9,436
Mexico 87 7,704 9,436
Samoa (Western) 87 3,832 9,436
Tonga 87 3,000 9,436
Lebanon 86 4,326 8,917
Philippines 86 3,555 8,917
Cuba 85 3,967 8,398
Morocco 85 3,305 8,398
Fiji 84 4,231 7,879
Iran 84 5,121 7,879
Marshall Islands 84 3,000 7,879
Puerto Rico 84 8,000 7,879
Egypt 83 3,041 7,360
India 81 2,077 6,322
Ecuador 80 3,003 5,803
Guatemala 79 3,505 5,284
Barbados 78 12,001 4,765
Nepal 78 1,157 4,765
Qatar 78 20,987 4,765
Zambia 77 719 4,246
Congo (Brazz) 73 995 2,170
Uganda 73 1,074 2,170
Jamaica 72 3,389 1,651
Kenya 72 980 1,651
South Africa 72 8,488 1,651
Sudan 72 1,394 1,651
Tanzania 72 480 1,651
Ghana 71 1,735 1,132
Nigeria 67 795 -944
Guinea 66 1,782 -1,463
Zimbabwe 66 2,669 -1,463
Congo (Zaire) 65 822 -1,982
Sierra Leone 64 458 -2,501
Ethiopia 63 574 -3,020
Equatorial Guinea59 1,817 -5,096

This book has, not surprisingly, aroused a great deal of controversy. The thesis is fairly simple: I.Q. highly correlates with the wealth (measured either as GNP per capita, or GDP per capita) of a nation.
The authors use I.Q. as their independent variable to predict wealth with regression analysis. Most of the scholarly apparatus is confined to the appendices, which makes for a smooth read. Why the fuss? No surprise, the authors find that whites and asians have higher I.Q. scores than do dark-skinned individuals. In fact, they claim that the average I.Q. in sub-saharan Africa is 70!
Is it any wonder to anyone then that Africa is so poor, desolate and disease ridden? It must be said that the authors leave themselves open to methodological criticism. For example, heritability within a population cannot be used to deduce the heritiability between populations in different environments. (Although, research by Rushton and others has conclusively shown that heritability in intelligence tends to work similarly between and within groups.) This aside, the thesis is extremely attractive, and the analysis shows the statistical power of using I.Q. as a predictor of national wealth.
I fear that the book may be a bit simplistic- nuance doesn't seem to be a strength of either author. Whatever the verdict on this book, those who wish to read about global stratification would be remiss to ignore it just because it doesn' t mesh with their ideology of global meliorism.
Perhaps the weakest part of the book is the discussion on the intelligence of heads of state. Here the authors claim that stupid countries have been hindered by stupid leaders. An example: Lenin was not very bright and he launched Russia down the idiotic road of communism! This anecdotal story telling doesn't impress. Are we really to think that Lenin was any dimmer than Truman? The authors should have left this part of the book out. It is clear that ideology, rather than intelligence, was the driving force behind the insalubrious path that many communist countries took. All things considered: read, enjoy, but make sure to down this with a few grains of salt.

Great book, a logical extension of the classic book by Murray and Herrnstein on a global scale.
1] Firstly when you look at the world, something that strikes you is that there is a massive difference in the stds of livings among several nations. Many theories have come forward, but none have been satisfactory.
a] One explanation popular among Marxists is that European nations are rich beacause of their colonial past and the rest of the world poor beacause of the same. But it can easily refuted by the fact that European nations with larger empires have poorer standards of livings than nations with smaller empires.
Eg:- In empire size Great Britian>France>Holland>Germany but in Per capita income Germany>=Holland>France>Great Britian. Similarly if three ex-colonies of the British Empire are to be compared, India recieved independence earlier (1947) followed by Malaysia followed by Hong Kong (1997), but in std of living H.K>Malaysia>India. So this theory does not live up.
b] Some say population density or lack of resources are the problems. However crowded nations like Japan or Holland with much lesser resources are more prosperous than Africa with a very low population density and heaps of natuaral resources.
c] Some say protestant ethics or culture may be the key to wealth. But Catholic Quebec is as prosporous as Protestant America unlike Catholic Mexico.
d] Some say nations like America are more prosporous due to a democratic or free society. Maybe true with the dictators of Africa but several nations like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Taiwan and S.Korea under the dictatorships have emerged as economic powerhouses without democracy. Singapore too has a rigid society, but this tiny island with no natuaral resources is extremely rich. India a famous democracy is extremely poor in comparision.
2] Since all the above theories do not satisfy you or you find some missing picture in todays politically correct thought, then this book will complete the picture. It claims that I.Q is a very important point to be considered in a nations progress.
3]According to this book the nations can be divided into three groups
a] Nations with average I.Q far above the global avg of 90, namely N.E Asia (I.Q=106) and Europe(I.Q=100), Northern and Southern extremes of Americas and Australia-New Zealand.
b] Nations with I.Qs near or a bit below the global average like S.E Asia, Central Americas, C. Asia, Middle-East and N.Africa, S.Asia, Pacific Islands etc.
c] Finally Nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, Carribean and Papua New Guinea with the lowest I.Qs.
3] Other factors do exist which affect I.Q and the overall I.Q of the world is rising (Flynn effect), hence investments on health and education in the Third world will pay dividents later.
4] More importantly it also tells which nations of the world will see the most economic growth, populations with high intelligence but held back due to communism, namely E.European nations like Russia, Czech Republic etc.. and N.Asian nations like China (PRC) etc...
5] Besides again The authors being whites have shown East Asians to be smarter than Whites, thus I do not think this is racial garbage. Read it and you will understand the world better.

Since about 25 years of IQ-research, this is the only book which is making a substantial difference. Around 1980 the last but one step forward had been made by Arthur Jensen, Hans Jürgen Eysenck, Helmar Frank, Siegfried Lehrl and myself in discovering the relationship between elementary cognitive tasks and IQ and hence working memory storage capacity. We had to wait long fo such a new breakthrough, and we are waiting still for even a greater one, the discovery of the genes underlying psychometric intelligence.

Even I myself, active in this field for 40 years, till then did believe that the low mean IQ scores of some populations were mainly the result of inadequate sampling and environment. Since I read Lynn and Vanhanen, I am convinced that population differences are not mere artefacts.

In 2002, after the publication of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" by Lynn and Vanhanen and the preliminary reports of PISA 2000, I became aware that PISA tests can be understood as IQ tests and that the transformation of PISA scores into IQ results yields very similar numbers. PISA scores, mean 500, standard deviation 100, can easily be transformed into IQ values, mean 100, standard deviation 15, by adding or subtracting the deviation from the mean in the relationship 100 : 15 = 6.67, that a mean of PISA 433 corresponds to IQ 90, PISA 567 to IQ 110, if PISA 500 is set to be IQ 100. Heiner Rindermann in his publications has confirmed that PISA transformed scores of nations are nearly identical with IQ means, published by Lynn and Vanhanen in this book.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule), the law of the vital few, states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The power of a nation does not depend of its mere number, but of the percentage of its cognitive elite, optimized by social evolution. Highly intelligent people are networking, and the economic effect of networking is the square of the nodes of the network, i.e. in our case the square of the number of people involved.

Lynn and Vanhanen show that non-market economies, in their increase in GDP, are not in step with market economies. While some former non-market countries with a high average IQ such as Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and especially China are narrowing the gap, those with a low average IQ seem to have no chance to catch up. On the one hand we have the impressive success story of Singapore, on the other hand are countries such as Haiti and Zimbabwe which are not only backward, but suffer from mismanagement and brain drain. In 1968, the Pacific island of Nauru possessed the highest GDP per capita in the world due to its rich phosphate deposits. Today, after the exhaustion of these deposits, Nauru -- faced with chaos amid political strife and the collapse of the economy caused by mismanagement and corruption -- has a GDP more in accordance with the mean IQ of its population.
One of the criteria which differentiate science from speculation is the power of prediction. In 2007, oil-producing Equatorial Guinea, a country with an average IQ of 59 (according to Lynn and Vanhanen), one of the lowest in the world, had a GDP per capita of 44,100$, one of the highest in the world. We can easily predict that, after the exhaustion of the oil, the GDP of this country will fall back into a range typical for a country with such a low average IQ. As long as the oil is flowing, a number of specialists and dealers of Lebanese, Chinese, Indian and other origins make money, but they will abandon such a country after the boom.

Even within developed nations the difference between prosperous and more backward regions amounts to 10 and more IQ points. For example, in Germany the IQ average of Bavaria is about 10 points higher than that of Bremen; in Italy the difference between Venice and Sicily is 13 points; in Spain the difference between Aragon and Andalusia 8 points; and in the United States the difference between New Hampshire and Mississipi is 10 points. Such differences, aggravated by internal migration between the economic core and the backward regions -- but not always of such magnitude -- will be found in any country. Within Brazil, the federal states of the south have an average IQ and GDP per capita similar to South Europe and four times higher than the states in the north-east of Brazil.
As we know, political turmoil and ethnic cleansing can eliminate or drive away the gifted of a country, and within a very short time harm the economy for decades to come . Highly-skilled citizens from stagnating economies are unlikely to merely watch their standard of living decline, and they will vote with their feet. Their migration amplifies economic divergence.
There are three types of men: Men (with IQ above 123), who invent machines, men (with IQ above 104), who repair machines, and men, who use machines. In a country where there are not enough men to construct and to repair a bridge, sooner or later traffic by railway will break down. This is the message of this extraordinary book.

Why unfortunately? Because it is expensive, because it is stuffed with data and references, and because it is very dry.

But (if your IQ can handle it) it is also a book you cannot afford to be unfamiliar with. [Fortunately, the actual reading time is small, assuming you are familiar with reading scientific journal articles and know how to skip liberally.]

Previous reviews have done an excellent job describing this book and I will not attempt to do a better one. And, based on them, you might be tempted to just familiarize yourself with the book's conclusions without actually reading it. Don't. A thorough understanding of the IQ issue, and the results of Linn's data analysis, are imperative if you plan to fully understand a wide range of current and future social, economic and political issues.

An example (as far from the relative wealth of nations as I can get). Will India, if it can get its economic act together, become the superpower the world needs to balance China (assuming the US population remains far too small to compete effectively with a fully industrialized China)? I used to hope so, but thanks to Linn I know better.

India's average IQ of 81, compared to China's 100, not only will make it a much poorer nation, it will also give it far fewer citizens with IQs above 125 (the IQ Linn says is required for individuals to do well in cognitively demanding occupations such as law, medicine, science, university research, engineering, and senior management).

How many less? Assuming equal populations of 1 billion, China will have 47.5 million high IQ individuals. But India will only have 2.1 million, about 1/20th as many as China. [Reference point: the US has about 10.7 million individuals with IQs of 125 or above, assuming 298 million population with average IQ of 98.]

Does this really matter? Well, perhaps only for our children (I have 4) and our grandchildren (I have 3). And yours.

Read the book.