IQ and Global Inequality
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''IQ and Global Inequality'' is a 2006 book by psychologist
Richard Lynn Richard Lynn (born 20 February 1930) is a controversial English psychologist and author. He is a former professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, having had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018. He is former assistant edit ...
and political scientist
Tatu Vanhanen Tatu Vanhanen (17 April 1929 – 22 August 2015) was a Finnish political scientist, sociologist, and writer. He was a professor of political science at the University of Tampere in Tampere, Finland. Vanhanen was a coauthor with Richard Lynn of ''I ...
.Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2006). ''IQ and Global Inequality''. Washington Summit Publishers: Augusta, GA. ''IQ and Global Inequality'' is follow-up to their 2002 book '' IQ and the Wealth of Nations'',Lynn, R. and Vanhanen, T. (2002). IQ and the wealth of nations. Westport, CT: Praeger. an expansion of the argument that international differences in current economic development are due in part to differences in average national intelligence as indicated by national IQ estimates, and a response to critics. The book was published by
Washington Summit Publishers Washington Summit Publishers (WSP) is a white nationalist publisher based in Augusta, Georgia, which produces and sells books on race and intelligence and related topics. The company is run by white supremacist Richard B. Spencer, who is also direc ...
, a
white nationalist White nationalism is a type of racial nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a raceHeidi Beirich and Kevin Hicks. "Chapter 7: White nationalism in America". In Perry, Barbara. ''Hate Crimes''. Greenwoo ...
and
eugenicist Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
publishing group. Lynn and Vanhanen's research on national IQs has attracted widespread criticism of the book's scores, methodology, and conclusions.


Summary

In ''IQ and Global Inequality'' Lynn and Vanhanen argue that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is a major contributor to national wealth as well as to various measures of social well-being. They base this argument on the finding that nations' average IQs have a strong correlation with several such factors, among them adult literacy (0.64), tertiary education (0.75), life expectancy (0.77), and democratization (0.57). The book is a follow-up to Lynn and Vanhanen's 2002 book '' IQ and the Wealth of Nations'', and expands on many of the ideas presented in their earlier book. ''IQ and Global Inequality'' responds to some of the criticisms directed against the earlier book. To address the criticism that measures of national IQ are unreliable, for 71 nations they measure national IQs using two different methods, and find that the correlation between different measures of national IQ is 0.95. As a further argument for reliability, they find that their reported national IQs are correlated with various measures of math and science achievement, with correlations ranging from 0.79 to 0.89. Finally, the book presents the authors' theory as to the cause of national IQs. They propose a model of gene-environment interaction in which high IQ leads to better nutrition, education and health care, further enhancing IQ. They also propose that the racial composition of countries is an important factor in national IQs. They base this conclusion on the observation that national IQs can generally be predicted from the countries' racial composition, and that national IQs of racially similar countries tend to cluster together.


National IQ and QHC values

Lynn and Vanhanen base their analysis on selected IQ data from studies which covered 113 nations. For another 79 nations, they estimated the mean IQs on the basis of the arithmetic means of the measured IQs of neighboring countries. They justify this method of estimation by claiming that the correlation between the estimated national IQs they reported in '' IQ and the Wealth of Nations'' and the measured national IQs since obtained is very high (0.91). Lynn and Vanhanen calculated the national IQs in relation to a
British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...
mean of 100, with a
standard deviation In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while ...
of 15. They adjusted all test results to account for the
Flynn effect The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standa ...
: adjustments were 2 points per decade for
Raven's Progressive Matrices Raven's Progressive Matrices (often referred to simply as Raven's Matrices) or RPM is a non-verbal test typically used to measure general human intelligence and abstract reasoning and is regarded as a non-verbal estimate of fluid intelligence. I ...
and 3 points per decade for all other types of tests. When two IQ studies were used from one country, their mean was calculated, whereas when three or more were available, the median was used.


Reception

Academic reviews of the book generally criticized both its methodology and conclusions. The methodology of the study was criticized by
Richard E. Nisbett __NOTOC__ Richard Eugene Nisbett (born June 1, 1941) is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Theodore M. Newcomb Distinguished Professor of social psychology and co-director of the Culture and Cognition program at the University ...
for relying on small and haphazard samples and for ignoring data that did not support the conclusions. Nisbett, Richard. 2009. Intelligence and how to get it. pp. 215.
University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...
geographer Stephen Morse also criticized the book (as well as ''IQ and the Wealth of Nations''), arguing that the authors' hypothesis rests on "serious flaws". Morse also argued: "The central dilemma of the Lynn and Vanhanen case rests with their assumption that national IQ data are primarily (not wholly) a function of innate ability, which in turn is at least partly generated by genes. There are many assumptions of cause–effect in here, and some of them involve substantial leaps of faith." Psychologist
J. Philippe Rushton John Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 – October 2, 2012) was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario until the early 1990s, and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for resea ...
, president of the
Pioneer Fund Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. One of its first projects w ...
that has been a long time funder of research by Lynn, reviewed the book in 2006 for ''
Personality and Individual Differences ''Personality and Individual Differences'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published 16 times per year by Elsevier. It was established in 1980 by Pergamon Press and is the official journal of the International Society for the Study of Individ ...
''. Rushton wrote that the book extends and answers criticisms against the earlier work in several ways, and believed that the methods were accurate. Evolutionary psychologist
Satoshi Kanazawa Satoshi Kanazawa (born 16 November 1962) is an American-born British evolutionary psychologist and writer. He is currently Reader in Management at the London School of Economics. Kanazawa's comments and research on race and intelligence, heal ...
claimed in 2008 to have found support for Lynn's theories. Kanazawa's study has been criticized for using the
Pythagorean theorem In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem or Pythagoras' theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse (the side opposite t ...
to estimate geographic distance, despite the fact that this theorem is incompatible with the shape of the earth. Other problems identified with this study include that Kanazawa incorrectly assumed that individuals migrated from Africa to other continents along linear trajectories, irrespective of physical boundaries, and ignored the fact that geographic distance and evolutionary novelty do not always correspond to each other. In an article published in the ''
European Journal of Personality The ''European Journal of Personality'' (EJP) is the official bimonthly academic journal of the European Association of Personality Psychology covering research on personality, published by SAGE Publishing. According to citation reports based on ...
'',
Heiner Rindermann Heiner Rindermann (born 12 March 1966) is a German psychologist and educational researcher. Academic career Rindermann received a Ph.D. in psychology in 1995 on the subject of teacher evaluations from Heidelberg University and completed a Habilit ...
compared the IQ scores from the book to a large number of international student assessment studies on subjects such as reading, mathematics, science, and problem solving, and found them to be highly intercorrelated. Statistical analyses indicated that the results could be explained by an underlying general cognitive ability. More than 30 commentaries on Rindermann's findings were published in the same issue of the journal. In a 2008 study published in the journal ''
Intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can b ...
'', Garry Gelade reported a strong relationship between the book's national IQ estimates and the country's geographical location. On this basis, he concluded that book's findings were "defensible". In the 2010 paper "A systematic literature review of the average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans", also published in ''Intelligence'', Jelte M. Wicherts and colleagues stated: Lynn and Meisenberg replied that "critical evaluation of the studies presented by WDM shows that many of these are based on unrepresentative elite samples" and that a further literature review, including taking into account results in mathematics, science, and reading, gave "an IQ of 68 as the best reading of the IQ in sub-Saharan Africa". Wicherts and colleagues in yet another reply stated: "In light of all the available IQ data of over 37,000 African testtakers, only the use of unsystematic methods to exclude the vast majority of data could result in a mean IQ close to 70. On the basis of sound methods, the average IQ remains close to 80. Although this mean IQ is clearly lower than 100, we view it as unsurprising in light of the potential of the
Flynn effect The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standa ...
in Africa (Wicherts, Borsboom, & Dolan, 2010) and common psychometric problems associated with the use of western IQ tests among Africans." Consequently, some later studies using average national IQ data have checked their results against both data sets. Economists
Jones Jones may refer to: People *Jones (surname), a common Welsh and English surname *List of people with surname Jones * Jones (singer), a British singer-songwriter Arts and entertainment * Jones (''Animal Farm''), a human character in George Orwell ...
and Schneider, commenting for '' Economic Inquiry'' said that the books appropriately summarized the previous volume's findings. Earl Hunt cited this work as an example of scientists going far beyond the empirical support to make controversial policy recommendations, and as such as examples of irresponsible uses of science. Hunt argues that in their argumentation they both made the basic mistake of assigning causality to a correlation without evidence, and that they made "staggeringly low" estimates of Sub-Saharan African IQs based on highly problematic data. He considers that by their negligence of observing good scientific practice Lynn and Vanhanen are not living up to the basic responsibility of scientists to make sure that their results can function as reasonable empirical support for policy decisions. On July 27, 2020, the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association issued a formal statement opposing the utilization of Lynn's national IQ dataset, citing various methodological concerns. They concluded "Any conclusions drawn from analyses which use these data are therefore unsound, and no reliable evolutionary work should be using these data."


See also

*
Race and intelligence Discussions of race and intelligence – specifically, claims of differences in intelligence along racial lines – have appeared in both popular science and academic research since the modern concept of Race (human categorization), race was fi ...
*
Evolution of human intelligence The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately seven million years, from the separation of the genus '' Pan'' until the em ...
*
Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test The Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) was created by Raymond Cattell in 1949 as an attempt to measure cognitive abilities devoid of sociocultural and environmental influences. Scholars have subsequently concluded that the attempt to construct m ...
*
Eugenics Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
*
Intelligence and public policy A large body of research indicates that intelligence measures such as intelligence quotient (IQ) varies between individuals and between certain groups, and that they correlate with socially important outcomes such as educational achievement, empl ...
*
Scientific racism Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...


Publications

* ''
The Mismeasure of Man ''The Mismeasure of Man'' is a 1981 book by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that "the social and economic ...
'' - Stephen Jay Gould (1981) * ''
The Bell Curve ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by b ...
'' - Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) * '' Race Differences in Intelligence'' - Richard Lynn (2006)


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iq And Global Inequality 2006 non-fiction books Books about human intelligence Books about wealth distribution Books by Richard Lynn Books by Tatu Vanhanen Race and intelligence controversy Eugenics books