The Global Bell CurveSummary of Richard Lynn's work in global IQ, which deserves study on this thread:
Quote:
Racial hierarchies
The book examines whether the same types of racial hierarchies in intelligence quotient (IQ) and socio-economic status that The Bell Curve found in the US are also present in other parts of the world.
Lynn finds that such hierarchies are widespread. They are demonstrated in Africa, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Worldwide, East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) and Ashkenazi Jews have the highest mean IQs and socio-economic positions, followed by Europeans. The Australian Aborigines and sub-Saharan Africans occupy the lowest positions in the observed social hierarchies. Intermediate positions are occupied by the Amerindians, South Asians from the Indian subcontinent, the Maori in New Zealand, and the mixed race peoples of South Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The same pattern is found for many other social and lifestyle variables such as educational levels, income, health, accidents, crime, marriage, fertility, and mortality. Cranial capacity, unemployment, and mental retardation also vary similarly.
The consistent hierarchies of IQ and achievement reported in Lynn's synthesis can be summarized as follows:
East Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) (Average IQ of 105)
Europeans (Average IQ 100)
South East Asians (Average IQ 87)
North Africans (Average IQ of 84)
Sub-Saharan Africans (Average IQ of 67–80)
Australian Aborigines (Average IQ of 62)
Lynn gives many examples of these hierarchies and their history. For example, in Brazil, it is Japanese who are today at the top. Originally, they were brought in after the end of slavery as indentured laborers to work on the plantations. Today, the Japanese outscore whites and other racial groups on IQ tests, have higher income, and are over-represented in university places. They are less than 1% of the total population but compose 17% of the students at the élite University of São Paulo.
In Caribbean nations, such as Cuba, Trinidad, and Guyana, it was instead Chinese and South Asians who came to work as plantation laborers. Today, Chinese are at the top with South Asians being placed between whites and blacks. There are also small groups of ethnic Chinese elsewhere such as in Mexico, Argentina, Australia, and Hawaii, where they consistently do well.
South Asians in Africa, Britain, and Australia average intermediate to whites and blacks in IQ scores, educational achievement, and economic success. Afro-Caribbeans in the UK score similarly on IQ tests to US blacks.
J. Philippe Rushton in a review writes "The results are remarkably consistent over time, place, and situation, irrespective of the original status of the people, or the language, history, and political organization of the country concerned.
Lynn is essentially on the right track, by studying long-term consistent differences between the performance of various ethnic groups, when forced by circumstances to compete in the same region. However he errs in two ways-
1) What he's basically tracking is a measure of the 'competitive ability' of various groups when competing together in the same region for economic and educational rewards. It would therefore be more appropriate to use the relative rankings above as a measure of 'competitive ability' of ethnic groups rather than an IQ ranking, which is a more controversial and ill-conceived term.
2) He's obviously wrong in focusing on 'racial hierarchies' when these differences are masked by much larger differences within races due to other factors such as social attitudes and religious values. That explains the faulty result where he assigns 'South Asians' (which he considers as one race) to be overall inferior to whites in competitive ability - when a simple analysis of competitive ability measures of Indians (who are predominantly non-Muslim), Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would make it obvious to any researcher that Indians have consistently outperformed Whites in all regions. 'South Asian' averages are very obviously depressed by the huge non-Indian contingents in these regions.
I have posted data in earlier posts that detail out the outperformance by Indian population over Whites in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Even if one considers other older diaspora areas (Malaysia/Singapore, South Africa, West Indies, Fiji) - in each case the Indian population has outperformed based on education parameters (as well as economic, if one ignores affirmative action for local bhumiputras in some regions) when compared to the local non-immigrant populace in each one of these regions.
Clearly, if we are to establish a competitive ability ranking like the one Lynn attempts - Indians would definitely rank above Whites. The more pertinent issue is really the relative position of East Asians and Indians at the top of the heap. Here the results seem to be mixed. Chinese in India don't seem to be doing all that well in relative terms. Chinese seem to be doing much better than Indians in Malaysia/Singapore.
Anybody with any research/data that adds to or refutes / corroborates either Lynn's or my categorizations ?