Global IQ inequalities decrease in latest findings
This press release concerns the latest findings in international intelligence data.
- (1888PressRelease) June 29, 2019 - Japan, Taiwan and Singapore share top spot in the latest global IQ study, the most extensive published since 2012. The three East Asian countries shared an aggregate score of 106, two points ahead of China (104).
Belarus topped Europe's IQ table at 102, closely followed by Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Estonia and Liechtenstein (101).
Elsewhere, North America's highest country-IQ was obtained by Canada (100), significantly clear of the United States at 97. Suriname topped South America's podium with 90 points, while Australia and New Zealand shared Oceania's honors at 99.
However, a major finding was a lower standard deviation between the scores of the 203 countries and regions studied, indicating a decline global IQ inequality. The largest gain was made by Caribbean state Haiti, whose new average IQ of 82 is an increase of 15 points from the 2012 index and places it at the global average along with the Philippines, UAE, Afghanistan, Albania, North Macedonia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Retired University of Ulster psychology Professor and intelligence expert Richard Lynn teamed up with Chemnitz University of Technology academic David Becker to collate the most rigorous meta-analysis of IQ studies ever; identifying and accounting for various differences in sampling methodologies and confounds for decades of research.
The pair explained that the lack of stable datasets for some countries remains the greatest limitation to a holistic international IQ index, as well as the deterioration of statistical reliability for intelligence testing at the lower margins. A staple of intelligence testing comes from internationally standardized school testing: PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS. Several countries do not participate, or keep results confidential.
In response to criticism of previous editions, Lynn and Becker imposed stricter data quality admittance in the interests of overall model coherency, though this came at the expense of a small minority of countries whose reported average IQs are implausible and are likely to remain turbulent pending new data. For this reason Lynn and Becker adjusted the scale with a minimum country-IQ cutoff point of 60.
Lynn and Becker's findings, published in a 475 page volume entitled “The Intelligence of Nations,” also analyzed the interaction of country intelligence with a multitude of social and economic metrics such as per capita income, GDP, level of democracy, happiness, health/nutrition, religiosity, criminality and reproductive behavior. They conclude with extensive predictive modelling of future country IQs based on demographic projections, the geopolitical ramifications of this, while also proposing ways that population intelligence can be increased.
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