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IQ and the Wealth of Nations
How many more times will someone suggest this book in the comments section of this blog? I like this book and I think it offers a real contribution. Nonetheless I feel no need to suggest it in the comments sections of other peoples' blogs.
I do not treat this book as foundational because of personal experience. I've spent much time in one rural Mexican village, San Agustin Oapan, and spent much time chatting with the people there. They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring. And that's in their second language, Spanish.
I'm also sure they if you gave them an IQ test, they would do miserably. In fact I can't think of any written test -- no matter how simple -- they could pass. They simply don't have experience with that kind of exercise.
When it comes to understanding the properties of different corn varieties, catching fish in the river, mending torn amate paper, sketching a landscape from memory, or gossiping about the neighbors, they are awesome.
Some of us like to think that intelligence is mostly one-dimensional, but at best this is true only within well-defined peer groups of broadly similar people. If you gave Juan Camilo a test on predicting rainfall he would crush me like a bug.
OK, maybe I hang out with a select group within the village. But still, there you have it. Terrible IQ scores (if they could even take the test), real smarts.
So why should I think this book is the key to understanding economic underdevelopment?
Addendum: I am sorry there have been too many nasty comments, so I have taken the comments down. They aren't deleted forever, I like to think that I will have time to pick out the bad ones and put the thread back up. I do understand that most of you (and not just on one side of the debate) are capable of discussing this topic with the appropriate tone.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 18, 2007 at 05:51 AM in Books | Permalink
Comments
Some people do what works. How these individuals stumbled upon their successful rules, I, for one, do not know. One's Modus Operandi might be more advanced, but carelessly suggesting IQ might be the reason for it surely disproves that thesis.
Posted by: RRE at Jul 18, 2007 6:01:49 AM
If high IQs are in part an artifact of development, which is what I think you are suggesting, (familiarity with written tests, etc.) then isn't there a reverse causation thing going on here? Or perhaps a feedback/multiplier process.
Although the book, which I haven't read, ought to deal with that rather obvious point.
If the authors are suggesting that raw intelligence - 'real smarts' as opposed to measured IQ - explains development, then, contrary to your observation that people in poor countries have plenty of real smarts, they must be arguing that people in poor countries are in fact less smart. Which, if nothing else, is stunningly politically incorrect (and, my instinct would be, plain incorrect).
If they are arguing that developing the kind of intelligence that also leads to high IQ scores explains a development, that's a significantly different argument - one that would also make your point about real smarts in Mexican villages besides the point.
Which is it?
If they do argue that people in poor countries are less smart (as distinct from lower IQ measures), how do they explain it? Nutrition? Hopefully not genes.
Nutrition has the potential to generate a feedback process, so development leads to better fed smarter people, leads to more development etc.
Posted by: Luis Enrique at Jul 18, 2007 6:52:46 AM
I've seen some people who treat addiction complain about the official diagnosis criteria. They say that classifying addictions in the same way as diseases tempts people to take what is a description of behavior (something like "has attempted to quit, interferes negatively with social life and work, development of tolerance") and use it as an explanation of behavior ("He's that way because he's addicted").
Doesn't IQ tests suffer from the same problem? We know bloody little about what causes what correlations there are, but people go around acting as if IQ is an answer to something.
There is a thread over at crooked timber on it, if anyone really feels like engaging the people who would like to prove their intelligence with a number rather than with achievements...
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Jul 18, 2007 6:54:44 AM
Tyler states that he likes the book and thinks it makes a contribution. He never actually says that he read it. I certainly have not read it. But assuming that the book marshals evidence and makes testable statements, Tyler seems to be dismissing these with his personal, n=1, experience in Mexico.
Posted by: mc at Jul 18, 2007 7:08:55 AM
I would be interested in reading it. I'm pretty sure that I'm intelligent enough to read it, but I can't afford to buy it.
Perhaps it's at the public library . . .
Posted by: john Mark van Rozendaal at Jul 18, 2007 7:32:56 AM
They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring. And that's in their second language, Spanish.
That's all well and good, but the topic of the book is the correlation between IQ and wealth. So, the relevant question is, are the people of San Agustin Oapan wealthy?
A correlation between IQ and wealth may exist independently of whether or not there are other types of intelligence.
Posted by: Franz at Jul 18, 2007 7:57:05 AM
Poverty and wealth are measured in a way that gives high numbers to the results of massive capital investment. So of course these very smart people would have low IQs. They acquired their skill sets in a low capital environment. IQ measures some of the skill sets that are advantageous for massive capital investment.
Posted by: Huggy at Jul 18, 2007 8:01:49 AM
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I'm not sure I see the controversy in saying a country's average score on IQ tests is directly related to its national wealth. I think the fact calling it an IQ test , which is a misnomer, is the problem since no one seems able to definitively say what intelligence is in the first place. Leaving that aside and given the relatively consistent results of multiple applications of the test, we can assume the test is measuring something and leave it at that. Whether it's a certain way of thinking, a certain body of knowledge, or what have you the end result still seems to be that increasing whatever the test is measuring leads to a more economically well off society.
That's what people should be focusing on, not a nebulous philosophical argument on the nature of intelligence and whether or not one body of knowledge (say natural lore) is as valuable as another (say formal math and language skills).
Posted by: Dan Chituc at Jul 18, 2007 8:03:50 AM
It is puzzling that anyone should say that IQ can only be measured by written tests. For decades, intelligence tests for illiterates have been used massively, all over the world. I believe that fact is mentioned in the cited book. Also, it is irrational to say that intelligence is a meaningless concept and then to say that some Mexican villagers are as intelligent as anyone else. Is intelligence quantifiable or isn't it?
Oh, and if they are so "smart", how come they're not rich?
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Jul 18, 2007 8:15:56 AM
@Dan:
"Whether it's a certain way of thinking, a certain body of knowledge, or what have you the end result still seems to be that increasing whatever the test is measuring leads to a more economically well off society."
Or the other way around, of course. An economically well off society increases what the test is measuring.
@Robert:
"Oh, and if they are so "smart", how come they're not rich?"
Pff.. why is America richer than Russia, even though football is the former's national sport and chess the latter's? Are russians really that stupid, even though the play chess very well? Or this causality between intelligence and national income like the emperor's new clothes: non-existant.
Posted by: JSK at Jul 18, 2007 8:44:24 AM
It's not just for illiterates... My testing for the gifted program was entirely non-written. This was in 1979. Moreover, the type of testing that was done would have been extremely difficult to do on a written exam.
Whatever it is that IQ measures, a written IQ test would (cheaply) measure something quite different than what I was measured against.
Having said that, there is a well-documented rise in US national IQ over the last hundred years which to my knowlege is yet to be explained, especially since our educational standards have steadily declined over the same period.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Jul 18, 2007 8:49:20 AM
Thanks Tyler, personal experience is and should be an important part of our understanding of the world.
It would be nice to hear more about your travel experiences on the blog. "my favorite things" columns only take us so far.
Posted by: michael vassar at Jul 18, 2007 8:54:11 AM
Thanks Tyler, personal experience is and should be an important part of our understanding of the world.
It would be nice to hear more about your travel experiences on the blog. "my favorite things" columns only take us so far.
Posted by: michael vassar at Jul 18, 2007 8:54:18 AM
Totally agree with Tyler. For more of the same, see Guns, Germs, and Steel. A quick quote:
"From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is."
Diamond presents excellent arguments for ancient geographical causes for different levels of development. Concrete factors like the extreme isolation of Australian aborigines are much more important than the results of a culturally biased test.
Posted by: Spergler at Jul 18, 2007 8:56:27 AM
If they do argue that people in poor countries are less smart (as distinct from lower IQ measures), how do they explain it? Nutrition? Hopefully not genes.
They do argue that it's genes:
The significance of the high heritability of intelligence is that it implies that the differences in intelligence between the peoples of different nations are likely to have a genetic basis
(Via http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001463.html)
Posted by: JewishAtheist at Jul 18, 2007 9:23:16 AM
They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring. And that's in their second language, Spanish.
What's their first language, Nahuatl?
Posted by: Joshua Holmes at Jul 18, 2007 9:36:12 AM
@JSK
"Or the other way around, of course. An economically well off society increases what the test is measuring."
That's always the question in any kind of a statistical study, are we looking at correlation of causation? I haven't read the book (though it's certainly on the reading list now), but I'd imagine if the issue isn't dealt with it's certainly the next logical step. Simply on the face of things, I'm inclined to think that increasing what's traditionally called IQ can't help but drive economic success as people have more opportunities opened to them, but it's certainly possible it could go the other way.
@JewishAtheist
It's a real shame to hear they took the genetic route by way of explanation. Besides the wildly inappropriate connotations blaming poverty on inherent inferiority raises, the simple fact is it should be clear to any student of humanity and history that genetic inferiority is patently false. Now an extremely promising work is tainted with the assumed, if not actual, racist overtones.
Posted by: Dan chituc at Jul 18, 2007 9:52:28 AM
I think Tyler (it's you? check? OK) is right on when he says "[we] like to think intelligence is mostly one-dimensional, but at best this is true only within well-defined peer groups of broadly similar people". I know that by the standards of a traditional farmer or a hunter I would be considered a bumbling idiot, and it's even quite possible that this would hold true even if I had their background (in other words, it may be affected by genes).
But who are we to say that our kind of intelligence is the only important one? In the news, I now see that Norman Borlaug, the father of the green revolution and Nobel peace price recipient, was awarded yet another prize, from Bush this time. It's not surprising, they say he may have saved a billion people from starvation. The thing is, I read his bio on wikipedia, and what do I see?
He grew up on a farm. He failed the entrance exam to the University of Minnesota, but did somehow secure a place anyway. (The reason he could apply in the first place was a depression era social program!).
Posted by: Harald Korneliussen at Jul 18, 2007 10:03:04 AM
Most people from other cultures would not do well on a written IQ test. It reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould's book The Mismeasure of a Man. Some new European immigrants were IQ tested when they got off the boat on coming to America. Of course, many didn't speak English. Some who didn't do well were taken for sterilization. Later it was proved that this process was used to obviously weed out certain groups of immigrants.
Posted by: Scott Miller at Jul 18, 2007 10:07:11 AM
I do not treat this book as foundational because of personal experience.
Correct, you ignore certain science when it runs up against your initial biases. Similarly, global warming must not be happening because my feet are cold right now.
I've spent much time in one rural Mexican village, San Agustin Oapan, and spent much time chatting with the people there. They are extremely smart, have an excellent sense of humor, and are never boring.
None of these things are inconsistent with lower average IQ scores. Humans are, as a species, very smart. This does not mean individual differences in intelligence are artificial or meaningless.
I'm also sure they if you gave them an IQ test, they would do miserably. In fact I can't think of any written test -- no matter how simple -- they could pass. They simply don't have experience with that kind of exercise.
The implied argument here is that the tests are biased against certain 'undeveloped'/'minority' populations. That we haven't measured the same underlying suite of abilities that we have in 'developed' cultural populations or that they do not carry the same economic implications. But this is an empirical claim with methodological avenues open to investigating it. It just so happens those empirical investigations do not support your insinuations. As you might know if you actually read the three relevant books in question or paid attention to their arguments on test validity and reliability which directly address this issue.
When it comes to understanding the properties of different corn varieties, catching fish in the river, mending torn amate paper, sketching a landscape from memory, or gossiping about the neighbors, they are awesome.
See above - you are not at all addressing how individual differences apply to learning these skill sets and others, or how this applies to economic outcomes. You are failing to understand and/or engage the arguments you are purporting to challenge.
Some of us like to think that intelligence is mostly one-dimensional...
Correction: there are some people who actually take the time to learn about the rich science of intelligence, and there are others who brush the entire science aside because they believe they already know what that science says and disagree with this straw knowledge on principle.
So why should I think this book is the key to understanding economic underdevelopment?
The books and the paper by your fellow George Mason colleague, Garett Jones, both provide convincing arguments for why IQ needs to be taken seriously for understanding economic development. It's one of the more robust predictors of economic outcomes, the best human capital measure, we have a lot of world data, it doesn't appear to be simply a proxy or result of another simple environmental variable ("education", "money"), and it predicts economic outcomes just as successfully for individuals and groups of individuals.
There is no "one" variable, and none are probably necessary or sufficient, but ignoring IQ is missing a mighty important piece of the global (and national) inequality picture.
Perhaps your readers would stop pestering you if they got a sense you were taking the research more seriously than exceedingly glib and wrong-headed posts like this suggest you do. Or if this same irritating bad faith approach to the research wasn't so ubiquitous.
Posted by: Jason Malloy at Jul 18, 2007 10:15:19 AM
Bravo on this post---I've been waiting for a well-known blogger to make a statement like this (in contrast to say Posner, who seems to put a ridiculous weight on IQ in his various blog posts).
Posted by: Kenji at Jul 18, 2007 10:25:54 AM
I can't believe that commentators on this blog supports primitive, racist measures of both intelligence and wealth. I thought we had moved on about 100 years ago.
Posted by: Gina at Jul 18, 2007 10:27:04 AM
What's remarkable about the stalwart defenders of IQ = intelligence, is how their own arguments seem to cast doubt on their thesis ... unless they're willing to concede that they themselves score poorly.
Any such concessions?
Posted by: Anderson at Jul 18, 2007 11:23:04 AM
Oh, and if they are so "smart", how come they're not rich?
Bwahahahahaha!
Posted by: fustercluck at Jul 18, 2007 11:25:42 AM
The post shows the massive disconnect between popular ideas on IQ testing and the reality. Ninety percent of academic psychologists think that IQ tests are valid and measure intelligence, while the popular press (and some bloggers) airily dismiss decades of science because it doesn't fit their prejudices. It's as if a union member refused to believe in the benefits of free trade.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Jul 18, 2007 11:29:39 AM
