Recent Study Relating IQ/Human /Capital to per capita GDP

Update: Here is a handy per capita GDP Predictor, which provides a 0.97 r correlation (!) between its predictions and the actual GDP numbers, using national IQ and an economic freedom metric (plus "tweaks") as input. (via Brian Wang) Methodology is provided at the link.

Wikipedia
Heiner Rindermann, of the Chemnitz University of Technology, has a study being published in the upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study looks at 90 countries, correlating the intelligence of the populations with the per capita GDP -- in an attempt to understand the relationship of human capital to national economic well-being.

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.

.... “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. _PsychologicalScience_via_NextBigFuture

Many factors are involved in the determination of national prosperity, including economic freedom, rule of law, property rights, and trust. But study after study appear to indicate that cognitive ability is as important as the other factors. In fact, certain minimum levels of average cognitive ability may be necessary for some of the other important factors to be reliably present.
Here is more on that topic by Rindermann in an abstract taken from an earlier (2007) study:

. It is shown that in the second half of the 20th century, education and intelligence had a strong positive impact on democracy, rule of law and political liberty independent from wealth (GDP) and chosen country sample. One possible mediator of these relationships is the attainment of higher stages of moral judgment fostered by cognitive ability, which is necessary for the function of democratic rules in society. The other mediators for citizens as well as for leaders could be the increased competence and willingness to process and seek information necessary for political decisions due to greater cognitive ability. There are also weaker and less stable reverse effects of the rule of law and political freedom on cognitive ability. _ScienceDirect

It is crucial for the future of humanity that the genetic fraction of the underpinnings of differences in average population intelligence (see map) not be denied or downgraded. Any attempts to explain all or most of the differences in population average IQ by nutritional, educational, or other environmental factors without including the genetic component, is counter-productive for future generations. Nutrition, education, and environmental intellectual enrichment of all kinds are all important -- but not sufficient for the goals of any philanthropic humanist worth the description.

The best hope for long-term improvement in average human intelligence exists within a broadly applied, advanced genetics. Such a program is likely to result in smaller IQ and EF gaps between populations -- proportionally -- than at present. The only thing to be achieved by following a politically correct path of HBD denial, is the continued and inexorable descent into a dysgenic Idiocracy.

Reasons for Economic Growth: Don't Forget Human Capital

NextBigFuture
MIT economists and computer modelers are attempting to answer the age old question: "Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?" (via Next Big Future) They have framed the question in terms of economic growth, and have surrounded it with sophisticated computer modeling and visual representations, but they seem to have left out a crucial, central variable: human capital.

In the MIT model, the key variables considered are the diversity of economic "inputs" and diversity of economic "outputs" for a country.

Economists think of production in terms of inputs and outputs. The outputs are the goods that a country produces. The inputs are everything that’s required to produce those goods. In 19th-century America, lumber was an example of a product with relatively few inputs. Exporting it required little more than the manpower and tools to chop down trees and haul them to shipping ports. Twentieth-century digital-signal-processing chips, on the other hand, are products that require a lot of inputs: the ability to extract and purify exotic materials like gallium arsenide, computer-aided design software to produce circuit layouts, and the chemicals and vacuum chambers required for the deposition of different layers of material, among other things.

Hidalgo and Hausmann argue that the diversity of a country’s production capacity, and thus the true strength of its economy, depends on the diversity of both its outputs and its inputs. Two countries could export the same number of products — they could have the same diversity of outputs — but if one exports only garments, it’s likely to have many fewer inputs than a country that exports a mix of garments and other light manufacturing, agricultural products, electronics and cultural goods. And the country with more inputs, the researchers claim, will adapt better to a changing world economy. _MIT

Hidalgo and Hausmann have found that GDP correlates pretty well with diversity of outputs, but it correlates much better with diversity of inputs. And the cases where the correlation breaks down could actually be more interesting than the cases where it holds, because they could indicate economies poised for growth. In 1970, for instance, the Korean economy had much greater diversity of inputs, according to Hidalgo’s measure, than the Peruvian economy; but Peru had twice Korea’s GDP per capita. Over the next 30 years, the relative diversity of inputs in the two countries’ economies stayed more or less the same, but by 2003, Korea had four times Peru’s GDP per capita. _NextBigFuture

Human capital can be represented by several different markers. Levels of educational achievement, for example, can be seen as one measure of human capital. Quality of pre-natal care, child-raising, and early education are other very crucial metrics. But one assessment of human capital which absolutely cannot be neglected in the analysis of a nation's long-term economic trajectory, is the average population IQ.

Per capita GDP vs. national average IQ. The regression line is shown in red. The correlation coefficient is 0.73.
There are many ingredients which go into the economic growth and success of a society, region, or nation. But any analysis which dances around the central issue of human capital, can easily be seen as a sophisticated smokescreen or obfuscation, rather than an attempt to get at the heart of the issue.

A nation's exports and imports are certainly important indicators of its economic health. But what is cause and what is effect? Clearly the MIT researchers are wrapped in a complex dynamic computer network of circular causation -- and potential infinite regress -- unless they can clearly identify variables which are more central and causative.

Political correctness has long been associated with the death of honest research and scholarship in many departments of academia. The ascendancy of post-modern multiculturalist ideology in the humanities departments and in administrative policies of universities has trickled down and spilled over into the social sciences -- even into some of the harder sciences. There are simply some topics and phenomena which one cannot even hint at, much less mention outright -- and far less make a topic of serious study.

Imagine all the time, effort, and resources being wasted at all levels of society, devoted to "dancing around the obvious." Entire huge and expensive departments of academia, media, industry, and government are devoted to obfuscating and denying truths which are obvious to any intelligent 6 year old.

But MIT has very big computers, very good tools of visual illustration, and very intelligent professors and researchers. Best to let them show them off, and pull the wool over society's eyes, using very sophisticated tools. Lie back and enjoy it. You'll feel much better about it all that way.

Energy and the Wealth & Poverty of Nations

Image Source via Robert Hargraves

Energy is the crucial factor which determines how well a people can live. In fact, the availability of energy also determines how many people can live comfortably in a given area. Leftists in the faux environmental movement want to shut down energy so as to eliminate at least 90% of the humans currently living on Earth.

Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun. - Paul Ehrlich, ``An Ecologist's Perspective on Nuclear Power'', May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report

If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other."
—Amory Lovins, The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22 _YVY_via_SeekerBlog

ImageSource

The map above is a look at world poverty by nation. The image below is a graphic look at global electric power production by region and nation. The comparison is stark.

ImageSource

With an abundant and relatively inexpensive source of energy, the Earth could comfortably support ten times the current human population of Earth -- living in health and prosperity. But such a large population would want to utilise the third dimension for both living and agricultural space. If they had the energy, it would be simple.

The political left, of course, is taking the opposite tack of energy starvation. Choking off energy supplies will force a rapid and drastic population shrinkage across the third world -- via famine, sickness, war -- and across the developed world via a further dropping of already-low birthrates.

It is clear that Mr. Obama is taking the low road of energy starvation at this particular crossroads. It is the easy and mindless choice, thus it is the one he chooses.

The best choice is to breed a tougher breed of human -- a pioneer breed who is eager to take up the challenge of the vast spaces beyond the current limits of human habitation and expansion. More on that topic later.