IQ and the Wealth of Nations

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 Lynn'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 Lynn 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 Lynn 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 8). And yours.

Read the book.

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.

Interesting topic

ordered by accident

I am a believer in intelligence as a concept

However this book is a good example of "garbage in, garbage out" where poor input data leads to poor output conclusion irrespective of the intermediary analysis.

The data is based on *** HIGHLY *** inadequate samples.

Example: to establish the average Iq of 25,000,000 Canadians the authors base their values on ** ONE ** sample of ** 313 ** canadians aged ... 7 to 12 years (!) and taken in ... 1979 !!!.

There is not even a mention if the sample is a random sample or if it was taken in a poor or rich suburb, or in a rural or city area, etc, which means in all likelyhood it was unlikely to even ba random sample, or worse the authors didn't seem to realise that this inadequacy would invalidate the whole study.

Many other countries IQ are similarly based on 1 or 2 old non-representative studies.

In the end, the claim that the authors make that they have "found" a relationship between iq of the countries and the wealth of nations is totally unfounded given the inadequacy of the data. I am stunned that the reasonably intelligent authors would not have realise their glaring mistake.

On a more positive note, chapter 1, a review of all the theories explaining the wealth of nation is exceptionally concise and well done and very worth reading, and similarly chapter 2, explaining the current state of knowledge on intelligence research is a good read.