Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Are the wealthiest countries the smartest?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/afps-atw031711.php

Are the wealthiest countries the smartest countries?

It's not just how free the market is. Some economists are looking at another factor that determines how much a country's economy flourishes: how smart its people are. For a study published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, researchers analyzed test scores from 90 countries and found that the intelligence of the people, particularly the smartest 5 percent, made a big contribution to the strength of their economies.

In the last 50 years or so, economists have started taking an interest in the value of human capital. That means all of the qualities of the people who make up the workforce. Heiner Rindermann, of the Chemnitz University of Technology, wanted to look more closely at human capital, and particularly the factor that psychologists call cognitive ability. "In other words, it's the ability of a person to solve a problem in the most efficient way�not with violence, but by thinking," Rindermann says. He wrote the new study with James Thompson of University College London.

The researchers collected information on 90 countries, including far-off lands from the U.S. to New Zealand and Colombia to Kazakhstan. They also collected data on the country's excellence in science and technology�the number of patents granted per person and how many Nobel Prizes the country's people had won in science, for example.

They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country's average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country's per capita GDP was $468 higher.

"Within a society, the level of the most intelligent people is important for economic productivity," Rindermann says. He thinks that's because "they are relevant for technological progress, for innovation, for leading a nation, for leading organizations, as entrepreneurs, and so on." Since Adam Smith, many economists have assumed that the main thing you need for a strong economy is a government that stays out of the way. "I think in the modern economy, human capital and cognitive ability are more important than economic freedom," Rindermann says.


###

For more information about this study, please contact Heiner Rindermann at heiner.rindermann@psychologie.tu-chemnitz.de.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Cognitive Capitalism: The impact of ability, mediated through science and economic freedom, on wealth" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Tiffany Harrington at 202-293-9300 or tharrington@psychologicalscience.org.

<my comment>

The paper is politically incorrect, but it mentions the importance of the top 5% of the IQ distribution in creating wealth.

This reminds me of that age old question - which came first, the chicken or the egg?

So which came first, the brains or the money? I think strong arguments can be made on both sides of that one. Obviously wealthier nations have access to more educational resources than poorer nations, but there also had to be a beginning to the wealth, right? And if you are smart, and you live in a poor nation (or state if you break it down in the US alone), do you move to a wealthier one for the job and/or resources? So is it the nation being wealthy that causes it to be smarter or the people who are smart moving there for its resources?

Then there's the whole nature vs nurture argument added to the mix. But that's another thread.

My absolute first question when I read this is "How did they measure the IQ?"

If they used Raven Matrices, then I might be tempted to think better of it. If they used most of the other available IQ tests, the questions are already biased towards the wealthier countries. For instance, they've shown that the sequencing of the comic-like sections on the WISC differs widely with experience, even in the US, with assumptions being made about things like a child having owned a bike.

My thoughts exactly. I'm really scratching my head how you can test IQ's across different languages and cultures. We recently moved abroad and even in the short time we've been it's quite obvious that kids are exposed to very different things at a young age. In the US there a lot of emphasis on early literacy so you have libraries everywhere, tons of kids books stores and story hours. Here reading to kids just doesn't happen as often. We don't even have a library in our neighborhood, books stores are just not as abundant here, and the children's section of book stores is rather small and filled with toys/DVDs instead of a lot of books. Obviously, that's going to affect how smart kids appear on paper at least in respect to language arts (I'm not talking about how smart they actually are because they are plenty of smart kids here too!).

It's hard enough to compare kids within the US when you have things like 2E kids, different socioeconomic backgrounds, and multilingual families, how in the world can you compare this worldwide?

Of course, if there is anything to this finding...



it's all the more depressing when you consider NCLB and all that surrounds it.

At the site I linked to, it said one could contact Tiffany Harrington tharrington@psychologicalscience.org to get a copy of the paper. She emailed it to me. The paragraph describing how national intelligence was measured is as follows (p9)

"Using results from TIMSS 1995-2007, PISA 2000-2006 and PIRLS 2001-2006, ability sum values for N=90 countries were calculated for the upper level (95th ability percentile, in within country norms IQ>125), the lower ability group (5th%, IQ<75) and
the mean (approx. 50th%, IQ&#8776;100). The results of the different studies were aggregated in a stepwise manner and finally standardized on a common scale (UK: M=100, SD=15,
�Greenwich-IQ�; see the on-line supplement). The values could be expressed in different scales (IQ- or SAS-scale, student assessment score), the IQ-scale is better known, but does not imply any theory of ability differences (culture, education, genes, wealth, politics etc.). Nevertheless the student assessment tasks are good indicators of crystallized intelligence (and to some extent also of fluid intelligence, especially PISA
tasks) and there is a very strong G-factor which could explain between 82% (GDP partialed out) and 95% of cross-country variance in competence studies independent of scale (e.g. Verbal vs. Science Literacy), study (e.g. PISA vs. TIMSS), grade level (e.g.
4th vs. 8th grade) and paradigm (psychometric intelligence vs. student assessment; Rindermann, 2007)."

Two other papers by Rindermann are

Educational Policy and Cognitive Competences
Heiner Rindermann and Stephen J. Ceci
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pps/4_6_inpress/Rindermann_final.pdf

The g-Factor of International Cognitive Ability
Comparisons: The Homogeneity of Results in PISA,
TIMSS, PIRLS and IQ-Tests Across Nations
HEINER RINDERMANN
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/hsw/psych...am/rindermann/publikationen/07EJPall.pdf

The 2nd paper describes in detail how he estimates IQ across countries.

Quote:
They found that intelligence made a difference in gross domestic product. For each one-point increase in a country's average IQ, the per capita GDP was $229 higher. It made an even bigger difference if the smartest 5 percent of the population got smarter; for every additional IQ point in that group, a country's per capita GDP was $468 higher.

Did they mention how they knew the top 5% got smarter? Did they say how they got smarter? And smarter in what way? Was it based on higher degrees of college at the same year the GDP went up? Was it based on the higher iq people getting better jobs and being more involved? How would you even know that when adults don't discuss iq's? Oh, the iq's were averaged and the Phd's were averaged per capita. But are they really better educating the smartest 5%? How are they doing that? I guess you could take the emphasis off the early childhood education and put more rigor in the universities. What did they do better that made the smarties more successful and contribute more to society? I guess you're hinting that the commies did better than us.

Quote:
Are the wealthiest countries the smartest countries?
It's not just how free the market is.

Exactly. I personally see IQ tests of being somewhat useful, but not an indication of intelligence. IQ tests and the whole nature vs nurture argument would make an interesting thread.

The tests are designed by the very people who educate and evaluate our skills. Degrees are then handed out to the people who fit into the system's test methodologies. Most of those who work in the various valued professions are choosen based on those degrees.

None of this necessarily proves the best people are working in the professions we as a society value. The system may appear to work, but without anything to compare it with, how do we know it is working anywhere near as good as it could. A sort of self fulfilling prophecy.