Why read IQ and the Wealth of Nations?

Book cover of IQ and the Wealth of Nations

Book description

Lynn and Vanhanen test the hypothesis on the causal relationship between the average national intelligence (IQ) and the gap between rich and poor countries by empirical evidence. Based on an extensive survey of national IQ tests, the results of their work challenge the previous theories of economic development and provide…

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Why read it?

1 author picked IQ and the Wealth of Nations as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Clifford F. Thies

Author

This is a frustrating book.

It is a path-breaking effort to gather national IQ data from as many countries as possible, and to correlate the same with GDP per capita and other measures of national success.

There are several major shortcomings to the original effort including: (1) that averages of "similar" countries were used where local estimates of national IQ weren't available, and (2) national IQs of many countries were drawn from small convenience samples.

These shortcomings might have been justified as the best that could be done given the costliness of collecting scientifically-valid samples, along with a call to…

From Clifford's list on The best books about the global economy.