NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION
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Economist Magazine States "Self-doomed to failure"
An unsparing new report by Arab scholars explains why their region
lags behind so much of the world
1) 1 in 5 Arabs live on less than $2.00 a day.
2)
1 in every 2 woman can't read or write.
3) They lack three things that doom them: Freedom, Knowledge &
Women Power
The actual UN Report can be downloaded from here.
4) Unfortunately, if one actually follows the link to the actual
UN report, the UN report includes in it's overview a section
describing why all of the arab's problems are caused by Israel
(and by implication the US), and, of course, no mention of
terrorism. Why can't someone publish anything in the arab world
that is at all critical unless it first blaming Israel for all of
the problems. We have a long way to go.
All Nobel Winners - last updated in 2002
Contribution of the Muslim People :
19.6% of World's Population
Nobel Prize Winners :
Literature
World Peace
Chemistry
Medicine
Elias James Corey , Peter Brian Medawar and Ferid Mourad are Nobel Prize winners but are Arab- Christians , not Muslims. |
Contribution of the Jewish People :
0.2% Of World's Population
Nobel Prize Winners
Literature
World Peace
Chemistry
Economics
Physics
Medicine / Biomedical Science
|
IQ and the Wealth of Nations
The Intelligence Of Nations: Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen,
Westport, CT: Praeger (2002), 256 pp., U.S.
$64.95 (Hdbk.) ISBN 0-275-97510-X
A review By Philippe Rushton
IQ and the Wealth of Nations. is a brilliantly-conceived, superbly-written, path-breaking book that does for the global study of economic prosperity what The Bell Curve did for the USA. Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen examine IQ scores and economic indicators in 185 countries. They document that national differences in wealth are explained most importantly by the intelligence levels of the populations. They calculate that mean national IQ correlates powerfully-more than 0.7-with per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). National IQs predict both long-term and short term economic growth rates. Second in importance is whether the countries have market or socialist economies. Only third is the widely-credited factor of natural resources, like oil.
One arresting fact emerges: the average national IQ of the world is only 90. Fewer than one in five countries have IQs equal or near the British average of 100. Almost half have IQs of 90 or less. This poses a serious problem if the book's conclusion that IQ = 90 forms the threshold for a technological economy is correct. Lynn and Vanhanen review the theories advanced over the last 250 years to explain why some countries are rich while others are poor.
These include:
-
climate theories (temperate zones are said to be best);
-
geographic theories (an East-West Axis is said to be best);
-
modernization theories (urbanization and division of labor are said to be
good); -
dependency theories (exploitationand peripheralization of poor nations are
said to be bad); -
neoliberal theories (market economies are said to be good);
-
psychological theories (cultural values like thriftiness, the Protestant
Ethic, and motivation forachievement are said to be good).
Some of these factors no doubt play a role. But it turns out that
IQ that does the heavy lifting. Next, Lynn and Vanhanen review the
scientific literature and find that IQ is an important determinant
of educational attainment, earnings, economic success, etc. In the
United States and Britain, the correlation between IQ and earnings
for individuals is approximately 0.35. (That is, cleverness is a
fairly loose guarantee of economic success for an individual, but
is significant across an entire population. If you bet on it at a
gaming table you wouldn't win on every throw,but you would make a
lot of money over an evening.) Of course, it makes sense that
intelligence determines earnings. More intelligent people learn
more quickly, solve problems more effectively, can be trained to
acquire more complex skills, and work more productively and
efficiently.
Nations whose people have high IQ levels also have high
educational attainment and large numbers of individuals who make
significant contributions to national life. On the flipside,
nations with low levels of intelligence have low levels of
educational attainment and few individuals who make significant
contributions. Low intelligence leads to unfavorable social
outcomes like crime, unemployment, welfare dependency, and single
motherhood. Lynn and Vanhanen prove that the widespread though
rarely stated assumption of economists and political
scientists-that all peoples and nations have the same average
IQ-is wildly wrong. Their evidence documents substantial national
differences in average intelligence.The highest average IQs are
found among the Oriental countries of North East Asia (average IQ
= 104), followed by the European nations (average IQ = 98), and
the mainly White populationsof North America and Australasia
(average IQ = 98). Further behind are the countries of South and
Southwest Asia, from the Middle East through Turkey to India and
Malaysia (average IQ = 87), as are the countries of South East
Asia and the Pacific Islands (average IQ = 86), and Latin America
and the Caribbean (IQ = 85). Lowest are the countries of Africa
(average IQ = 70). Lynn and Vanhanen find that some countries do
have higher or lower per capita incomes than their national IQ
averages would predict. This is where having a market or socialist
economy or sitting atop a sea of crude oil comes in.Some of the
countries with a higher per capita income than would be predicted
from theiraverage IQs are Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belgium,
Canada, Denmark,France, Ireland, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa,
Switzerland, and the U.S. Except for Qatar, South Africa, and
Barbados, all of these are technologically highly developed market
economies. Qatar's exceptionally high per capita income comes from
oil exporting, which is actually managed and controlled by
corporations and people from European and North American
countries. South Africa's much higher than expected per capita
income derives from the high performance of the industries
established and managed by the country's European minority.
Similarly, Barbados's above average wealth comes from its
well-established tourist industryand financial services, which are
owned, controlled and managed by American and European
countries.Some of the countries with lower per capita income than
would be predicted from their average IQ: Bulgaria, China,
Hungary, Iraq, South Korea, the Philippines, Poland, Romania,
Russia, Thailand, and Uruguay. Most of these are present or former
socialist countries. Iraq has suffered from losing the Gulf War
and a decade of UN trade sanctions. The large amount of ethnic
conflict inthe Philippines decreased growth.Lynn and Vanhanen
provide a detailed examination how well IQ theory stacks up
against its competitors. For example, two significant exceptions
to the view that a tropical climate is detrimental to wealth are
Singaporeand Hong Kong, which lie in the tropical zone but are
rich. Conversely, Lesotho and Swaziland are temperate, lying
slightly south of the Tropic of Capricorn, but poor. These
differences, however, can be explained in terms of intelligence
theory. The people of Singapore and Hong Kong belong to the ethnic
group with the highest average IQs; the people of Lesotho and
Swaziland belong to the ethnic group with the lowest.
Modernization theories, according to which all economies would
evolve from subsistence agriculture through to various stages of
urbanization and industrialization, have worked for Western Europe
and the Pacific Rim but have failed for the four remaining groups
of nations (South Asia, the Pacific Islands, Latin America, and
sub-Saharan Africa).
IQ and the Wealth of Nations proposes that modernization theories
describe Western Europe and the Pacific Rim because these
countries have appreciably the same or somewhat higher IQs than in
the United States. But they did not work for the other four groups
of countries because average IQs are below the technological
threshold. But why did the peoples of East Asia, with their high
IQs, lag behind the European peoples until the second half of the
20th Century? Well, China's science and technology were generally
more advanced than Europe's for around two thousand years, from
about 500 B.C. up to around 1500 A.D. But in the 15th century,
Chinese inventiveness came to an end and from that time on
virtually all the important advances were made by Europeans, first
in Europe and later in the U.S. The explanation may be that
Europeans developed the market economy, while China stagnated
through authoritarian bureaucracy and central planning.The failure
of Japan to develop economically until the late 19th century is
largely attributed to a regulated economy and isolation from the
rest of the world. By 1867-68 a revolution occurred and the new
rulers embarked on a program to modernize Japan by adopting
Western education and technology, and by freeing up theeconomy by
transforming state monopolies into private corporations. Much of
the Japanese economic success in the 20th century was built by
adopting inventions made in the West, improving them, and selling
them more competitively in world markets. Japan thereby built up
its motorcycle, automobile, shipbuilding, and electronics
industries. Although it is sometimes asserted that the Japanese
have not made any significant scientific and technological
innovations of their own, this underestimates their technological
achievements: the fiber-tipped pen (1960), "bullet" trains
traveling at 210 km per hour, much faster than any Western trains
(1964), laser radar (1966), quartz watches (1967), VHS video home
systems (1976), flat screen televisions using liquid crystal
display (1979), video discs (1980), CD-ROM (read only memory)
disks (1985), digital audio tape (1987), and digital networks for
sending signals along coaxial cables and optical fibers
(1988).African countries are at the opposite pole from China and
Japan in national IQ. This may explain why they are such a major
anomaly for modernization theory. The low rate of economic growth
of African countries following their independence from colonial
rule in the 1960s is one of the major problems in developmental
economics. During the years 1976-98, the average rate of economic
growth per capita GNP of the 41 countries of sub-Saharan Africa
for which data are available is much lower than in the rest of the
world. Many of the African countries actually suffered negative
per capita growth rate. Economists have quantified all possible
factors, such as climate, ethnic diversity, geography,
mismanagement, unemployment and the like, and compared the
situation to elsewhere in the world, especially Asia. They
concluded that these factors do not provide a complete explanation
and that there is some "missing element."Some have suggested the
low level of "social capital," i.e., the widespread corruption and
lack of trust in commercial relationships, poor roads and
railways, unreliable telephones and electricity supplies, and the
prevalence of tropical diseases such as malaria. IQ and the Wealth
of Nations identifies IQ as the missing link. Some of these
"social capital" are actually manifestations of a low level of
intelligence in the populations. Poor telephone services and
electricity supplies, low agricultural yields, and the poor advice
given by government advisory boards reflect low average IQ. With a
mean IQ of 70, the populations of Africa cannot be expected to
match the rates of economic growth achieved elsewhere in the
world. Finally, Lynn and Vanhanen peer into the future. They
predict future growth is most likely in countries with high
national IQ scores but currently bad economic systems.The
countries of the former Communist Bloc-Russia, Poland, Bulgaria,
and Romania, and the People's Republic of China, and Vietnam-are
good bets.
What else can be done? Lynn and Vanhanen also list some of the factors, some environmental and some genetic, that might raise IQ scores and somewhat alleviate the disparities in national average IQ. These include: better nutrition, education and health; and ending the dysgenic fertility trends where the lowest IQ people produce the most children. (Obviously, immigration policy has a role to play too.) The take-home message of IQ and the Wealth of Nations: national differences in IQ are here to stay and so is the gap between the rich and the poor countries. Political promises that the gap is temporary, and will be remedied by aid from rich countries to poor countries, or even by poor countries adopting appropriate institutions, will not be fulfilled. Such promises assume that all human populations have equal mental abilities to adopt modern technologies and to achieve equal levels of economic development. They do not. The authors sound a clarion call for the recognition of national and race differences in intelligence.
Adapted from:
The Bigger Bell Curve
: Intelligence, National Achievement, and The Global Economy, 22
October 2001, (PDF version) in Elsevier Science Journal
Personality and Individual Differences
Philippe Rushton is a professor of psychology at the University
of Western Ontario and the author of Race, Evolution, and
Behavior: A Life History Perspective 2/27/02