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IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence)
 
 
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IQ and the Wealth of Nations (Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence) (Hardcover)

by Richard Lynn (Author), Tatu Vanhanen (Author) "In this chapter the major theories that have attempted to explain the causes of the inequalities in income and wealth between nations are reviewed ..." (more)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Greenwood Press (28 Feb 2002)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 027597510X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0275975104
  • Product Dimensions: 24 x 16.1 x 2.9 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 813,295 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Review

"Endorsement From J. Phillippe Rushton Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Professor of Psychology, University of Western Ontario: [A] brilliant integration of economics and psychology that illuminates the nexus between mental ability on the one hand, and national wealth, industrial productivity, and well being, on the other. This is a book that social scientists, policy experts, and global investment analysts cannot afford to ignore....Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's thesis is stunningly engineered to allow for no error of inference and no possible outcome than the correct one, strangely overlooked until now...IQ and the Wealth of Nations does for the study of human diversity and achievement among nations what The Bell Curve did for IQ and achievement in the USA.


Product Description

This work tests the hypothesis on the causal relationship between the average national intelligence (IQ) and the gap between rich and poor countries by empirical evidence. Based on a survey of national IQ tests, their results challenge previous theories of economic development and provide a new basis to evaluate the prospects of economic development throughout the world. They begin by reviewing and evaluating some major previous theories. The context of intelligence is then described and IQ introduced. Next they show that intelligence is a significant determinant of earnings within nations, and they connect intelligence with various economic and social phenomena. The sociology of intelligence at the level of sub-populations in nations is examined, and the independent (national IQ) and dependent (various measures of per capita income and economic growth rates) variables are defined and described. They then provide empirical analyses starting from the 81 countries for which direct evidence of national IQ is available; the analysis is then extended to the world group of 185 countries.
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In this chapter the major theories that have attempted to explain the causes of the inequalities in income and wealth between nations are reviewed. Read the first page
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Breakthrough in the Field of Economics, 4 Mar 2008
By Neil Osborne (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This landmark book solves what is probably the most important question in economics, namely what factors determine the level and growth of national income per head. Previously it was believed that the main determinants were the quantity and quality of the capital stock. In Prof Lynn's excellent book he completely redefines our view on the determinants of national income and concludes that the main determinant is the quality of a nation's labour force, as proxied by its average IQ.

With hindsight this should not have come as a surprise given that about 70% of the national income is paid as remuneration to labour. It also should not surprise us that intelligent, motivated labour forces might be more likely to accumulate capital, develop new technologies and embody them in the capital stock.

Prof Lynn has collated the results of IQ tests in 81 countries and, by estimating the IQs of a further 104, has compared GDP per head to average IQs for a sample of 185 countries. He explains at the microeconomic level how IQ is a useful predictor of an individual's income. He then extends this to the macroeconomic level and shows that a nation's IQ is the most important determinant of its GDP per head.

Prof Lynn's work is also very useful in identifying other variables that determine national income, such as free market vs socialist economies. The nations that are significantly below the IQ regression line are the former socialist nations of Eastern Europe and China, whereas the nations above it are the European and North American market economies. Prof Lynn therefore convincingly explains all the nations that over or under-perform and, in so doing, provides an unintentional but powerful argument in favour of the market economy.

Prof Lynn's work is such a breakthrough that it clearly merits a Nobel Prize. Regrettably, given the current prejudiced political climate, this is unlikely to be forthcoming.
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24 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars What is IQ?, 19 Nov 2003
By A Customer
what is IQ?
At first sight, Lynn and Vanhanen (L+V) appear to have discovered a remarkable and previously unsuspected relationship between IQ and the national wealth of countries. Judging from reviews on this site and others this is clearly an idea which catches the imagination of some readers. However, L+V give a very one sided account. This is a common feature of genetic accounts of intelligence, which leads many to suspect the true motives of such authors. The danger of such a one sided account here is that readers not aware of the full complexities of the issues are seduced into what appears a very straightforward hypothesis - that the poor countires of the world are in their predicament because of the natural intelligence of their population. L and V neglect to point out that the nature of IQ is just about the most controversial topic within modern psychology. There is no agreement between researchers as to what IQ tests measure. Whatever it is they measure, there is no agreement as to how much of this quantity is determined by the environment on the one hand and genetics on the other. L and V adopt the stance that IQ is largely genetic. This is far from accepted, and all the relevant evidence comes from the West. In the rich countries such as the UK and USA, with high standards of educational provision accessible to the majority, performance on IQ tests may well have a substantial genetic component. This is less likely to be the case in the third world, where the majority of the population have little access to good education, not to mention adequate food, housing etc. In other words, IQ in the third world is likely to be an index of access to education. This is further borne out by illiteracy rates. Illiteracy is a consequience of receiving little if any education. Illiteracy rates reported by Unesco correlate -0.73 with L and Vs international IQ estimates. Illiteracy has been shown to cause real brain changes, and reduced abstract problem solving, exactly the kinds of skills measured on the IQ tests reported by L and V. Even these abstract problem solving tests are far from culture free, as Naglieri has shown with his improved tests on which cross racial differences are negligible. In short, L and Vs account is polemical and one sided. It is dangerous in that some readers might be tempted to assume that the text gives an unproblematic account of how third world poverty is a result of low intelligence. Before accepting this simple and unbalanced hypothesis, readers should familiarise themselves with more thorough and balanced accounts, e.g. that of Mackintosh (98).
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A landmark book, 15 Sep 2008
By Volkmar Weiss - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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 far 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.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Worth serious consideration
On balance, I think this book makes a valid point, and it deserves to be read. Collating the volume of IQ data that they did, and analysing it in an objective manner, was in... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Paul R. Syms

1.0 out of 5 stars Big wholes in the logic of this racist rant
The simplistic relationship of IQ to national wealth is obvious nonsense. Some of the figures given for national IQs are Hong Kong 107,South Korea 106, Japan 105, UK 100, USA 97,... Read more
Published on 13 Aug 2004

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