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National IQ and Economic Outcomes Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2011) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Personality and Individual Differences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid National IQ and economic outcomes Gerhard Meisenberg Department of Biochemistry, Ross University School of Medicine, Picard Estate, Portsmouth, Dominica article info abstract Article history: One of the most consequential parts of Richard Lynn’s work is the establishment of a comprehensive data Available online xxxx set of ‘‘national IQ’’ for nearly all countries in the world. The present contribution demonstrates the use of this database for the explanation of two economic outcomes: (1) economic growth and level of attained Keywords: wealth at the country level; and (2) income distribution in countries as measured by the Gini index. The IQ results show that high IQ is associated not only with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, but School achievement also with more equal income distribution. These outcomes are not mediated by educational exposure. Intelligence Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Education Human capital Economic growth Gini index 1. Introduction for the countries and 90.5 for the totality of individuals living in these countries. The discrepancy is caused by the higher average In today’s world we find enormous differences between coun- population size of high-IQ countries. tries in wealth, social and political structures, and many ‘‘cultural’’ Lynn and his coworkers showed that national IQ is closely traits. Similar differences are observed between ethnic, racial, reli- related with the results of international student assessments in gious and other groups, even if they live in the same country. mathematics, science, and other curricular subjects (Lynn & According to the ‘‘reductionist’’ approach, many of these differ- Meisenberg, 2010; Lynn, Meisenberg, Mikk, & Williams, 2007; ences result from differences in personality traits and cognitive Lynn & Mikk, 2009). The reported correlations of averaged school abilities between human groups. Richard Lynn has been the most achievement scores with IQ are as high as r = 0.919 (N = 67 coun- prominent protagonist of this approach in recent years (Lynn, tries, Lynn et al., 2007) and, with more recent data, r = 0.917 2008a). (N = 86 countries, Lynn & Meisenberg, 2010). These results suggest Lynn’s most outstanding contribution to this field is the compi- that IQ and school achievement are alternative indicators for the lation of a data base of ‘‘national IQ’’ for most countries of the average intelligence in a country. In economic terms, both are mea- world. Data for an initial set of 81 countries were published in sures of ‘‘human capital’’. School achievement results are currently 2001 and 2002 (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2001, 2002), followed by an ex- available for 111 countries. Eighty-seven countries have data for panded list of national IQs for 113 countries (Lynn & Vanhanen, both school achievement and IQ, and 160 countries have either 2006). The most recent update expands this set to a total of 136 IQ or school achievement or both. countries (Lynn, 2010). Based on the well established relationship between IQ and National IQs are based on studies with a wide variety of cogni- earnings at the individual level (reviewed in Strenze, 2007), Lynn tive tests, with different versions of the non-verbal Raven’s Pro- and Vanhanen (2002, 2006) proposed national IQ as a cause for gressive Matrices as the most widely used test (data from 95 differences in per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) and other countries). The computing of results from different cognitive tests country-level economic outcomes. The theory is that wealth- into a single score is justified by the high correlations between producing activities such as running a business, designing build- alternative cognitive tests. All cognitive tests are thought to mea- ings, treating diseases and innovating are done more effectively sure, to various extents, ‘‘general’’ cognitive ability or g (Jensen, by persons with higher general intelligence. 1998). Fifty-two of the 136 national IQs are based on a single study. The most important implication of this postulated causal path is For all other countries the national IQ is calculated from multiple that economic conditions in today’s less developed countries can studies, numbering up to 22 for Japan. National IQs range from be improved by increasing, within biological limits, the cognitive 60 (Malawi) to 108 (Hong Kong, Singapore). The average is 86.0 abilities of the population. Lynn has always been adamant in claiming that IQ is a cause rather than merely a consequence of prosperity, and that genetic race differences explain part but not E-mail address: [email protected] all of the international IQ differences (Lynn, 2006). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.022 Please cite this article in press as: Meisenberg, G. National IQ and economic outcomes. Personality and Individual Differences (2011), doi:10.1016/ j.paid.2011.06.022 2 G. Meisenberg / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2011) xxx–xxx The Lynn/Vanhanen theory about the causal importance of primary, secondary and tertiary enrolment ratios in 2002, as re- country-level IQ differences for prosperity and other development ported in the 2005 Human Development Report of the United indicators has been attacked on theoretical grounds (e.g., Morse, Nations. 2008). However, the few empiric studies conducted so far were Corruption is calculated from the reverse of Transparency Inter- mainly supportive. The relationship between IQ and national national’s Corruption Perception Index for the years 1999–2005 wealth has been confirmed in some studies (Hunt & Wittmann, (http://www.transparency.org), combined with older data includ- 2008; Whetzel & McDaniel, 2006). Others found a relationship of ing the Business International corruption score from 1980–1983 IQ with economic growth (Jones & Schneider, 2006; Weede, (Treisman, 2000), and the ‘‘no corruption’’ domain of the Heritage 2004; Weede & Kämpf, 2002), although one study found no inde- Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index of 1995 (http://www.heri- pendent relationship between cognitive test results and economic tage.org/research/). growth, claiming that previously observed effects were due to the Economic Freedom is calculated from the unrotated first factors inclusion of the ‘‘Asian Tigers’’ (Chen & Luoh, 2010). of maximum-likelihood factor analyses of areas 2–5 of the Fraser There are reasons to expect that high national IQ reduces in- Institute’s Economic Freedom Index for the periods 1975–2005 come inequality in addition to raising the average income level. (Gwartney et al., 2009), and domains 1, 2, and 5–8 of the Heritage One reason is that through market forces, the skill premium is ex- Foundation Index for 1995–2005 (http://www.heritage.org/re- pected to be higher in low-IQ countries than in high-IQ countries. search/). This measure indexes the extent of business regulation In low-IQ countries many low-IQ people compete for unskilled and red tape. work, but few high-IQ people compete for cognitively demanding Big Government indexes the government’s share of GDP. It is cal- work in management, engineering and other professions. This re- culated from area 1 of the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom In- sults in high pay for individuals doing cognitively demanding work dex for the periods 1975–2005 (size of government), and domains relative to the pay of unskilled labourers. Another reason to expect 3 and 4 of the Heritage Foundation Index for 1995–2005 (fiscal less income inequality in high-IQ countries is the existence in these freedom and government spending). These measures are factorial- countries of institutions for collective bargaining and for the redis- ly and conceptually different from the other components of the tribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Cognitive sophistica- Fraser Institute and Heritage Foundation indices for ‘‘economic tion is required to create and maintain such institutions. So far, an freedom’’. inverse relationship of national IQ with income inequality has been Gini index: The primary data source is the World Income reported as an incidental finding in only two empiric studies Inequality Database (WIID2a) of the United Nations University, (Meisenberg, 2007, 2008), with no follow-up and no contradictory available at www.wider.unu.edu/wiid/wiid.htm, as described in findings in the literature. Meisenberg (2007). Missing data points were extrapolated from Economic outcomes are expected to depend not only on intelli- the World Bank’s World Development Indicators of 2005, the gence, but also on geographic location, natural resources, political Human Development Report 2005 of the United Nations, and the and economic institutions, and history. Studies about the effects of CIA’s World Factbook of 2009. IQ on economic outcomes must take these additional factors into Racial diversity is defined by the racial diversity index described account. Failure to do so can lead to spurious results because many in Meisenberg (2007). Racial distances were quantified as genetic variables used by economists correlate highly with national IQ. distance according to Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman (2003). The present paper extends the previous studies on the possible Freedom/Democracy is the average of political freedom defined causal effects of intelligence on economic growth and on income as the averaged scores of political rights + civil liberties from Free- inequality, using the most recent data. Based on the near-equiva- dom House at http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld, lence of IQ and school achievement (Lynn & Meisenberg, 2010), average 1975–2005; and democracy, defined as Vanhanen’s the IQ data are augmented by school achievement data. This per- democracy index (average 1975–2004), from the Finnish Social Sci- mits a far broader coverage of countries than in any previous study. ence Data Archive at http://www.fsd.uta.fi/english/data/catalogue/ FSD1289/.
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