The Bell Curve Part 11 Chapter 7- Unemployment, Idleness, and Injury

As in previous chapters, to avoid any implications of racial bias, the authors confine their studies to whites. The message is clear- among young white men in their late twenties and early thirties, both unemployment and being out of the labor force are strongly predicted by low cognitive ability. Interestingly, when the effects of IQ were taken into account, the probability of being out of the labor force went up, not down as parental SES rose. Strikingly, of the men that described themselves as being too disabled to work, nine out of ten were in the bottom quarter of the IQ distribution and fewer than one in twenty were in the top quarter. In fact, a man's IQ was by far and away the best predictor of whether or not he described himself as disabled. The reason for the close relationship between IQ and disability is unclear, but one possibility is that less intelligent people are more accident prone. The discussion of unemployment is limited to males because women enter and leave the work force for reasons to do with home and family which introduce a large and complex set of issues, whereas healthy adult males were still expected to work (at least they were in the early 1990s when The Bell Curve was written). The statistics that follow focus on white men who were out of the labor force for reasons other than school. The following chart reveals that dropout from the labor force rose as cognitive ability fell. White Men Who Spent a Month or More Out of the Labor Force in 1989 Cognitive Class Percentage 1 Very Bright 10 11 bright 14 111 normal 15 IV dull 19 V Very Dull 22 Overall Average 15 As the table shows, the very dull are twice as likely to be unemployed as are the very bright. The next step is to determine how much of this difference is due to the man's socioeconomic background. Holding age and intelligence constant, white men from more privileged backgrounds have a modestly smaller chance of dropping out of the labor force than do men from less privileged backgrounds. However, when IQ is added to the equation the role of socioeconomic background moves in the opposite direction, a male from a well-to-do family was more likely to be unemployed than a male from a family of low socioeconomic status. In contrast, a man of average age and socioeconomic status in the 2d centile of IQ had a 20 percent chance of being unemployed, compared to only a 5 percent chance for a man in the 98th centile of intelligence. It is not difficult to understand why high intelligence helps keep a man employed. As discussed in chapter 3, competence in the workplace is related to intelligence and bright people are more likely to find the workplace a congenial and rewarding place. Furthermore, a far sighted young man is more likely to want to lay the groundwork for a secure future by establishing a good work record while a shortsighted male maybe less inclined to do so. Statistically, smart men are more likely to be farsighted than dumb men. Now how does education influence the labor force dropout rate? High intelligence plays a greater role in reducing labor force dropout rate in males who have a college degree than it does in males with only a high school diploma. And for both samples, high family SES did not decrease labor force dropout independent of IQ and age. Once again, the possibility of labor force dropout actually increased in males who came from families with higher SES. So far, the authors have excluded all men who reported that they were unable to work from the analysis of labor force dropout rates. Low intelligence increases the risk of being unemployed for healthy young men but it is more complicated than that because low IQ also increases the risk of not being healthy. The following table shows the relationship of IQ and job disability in young men. It is not a pretty picture. Job Disability Among Young White Males No. per 1,000 Who Reported Being Prevented from Working by Health problems Cognitive Class No. per 1,000 Who Reported Limits in Amount or Kind of Work by Health Problems 0 1 Very Bright 13 5 11 bright 21 5 111 Normal 37 36 1V- Dull 45 78 V- Very Dull 62 11 Overall average 33 The numbers of those who claimed that they could not work because of a disability jumped seven fold from Class 111 to Class IV and then doubled again from Class 1V to Class V. These statistics were compiled in 1988, can you imagine what they would look like today with over 90 million people unemployed? The propensity of disability claims among the dull and very dull can be explained in part because people with low IQs are more likely to be blue-collar workers employed as manual laborers whereas men with high IQs are likely to be white-collar workers or executives. An executive with a limp can still be an executive but a manual laborer with a similar disability faces a more serious job impediment. However, this explanation, plausible as it may be, does not account for the relationship of intelligence to job disability because the odds of having reported a job limitation because of a health issue were 3.3 percent in those working in white-collar jobs and only slightly higher, 3.8 percent, in those who were employed in blue-collar jobs. More importantly, comparing men that had blue-collar jobs, those with IQs of 85 were twice as likely to be disabled than were men with an IQ of 115. Why might intelligence be related to disability, independent of the line of work itself? An answer leaps to mind. Smart people are less likely to have accidents! As Lewis Terman found, people with IQs above 140 are far less accident prone than are those with average intelligence. In another study, the risk of automobile accidents rose as the driver's IQ fell. Similarly, level of education, to some degree a measure of intellect, has been linked to accidents, injury and fatal injury. As we saw in Part 1, smarter workers are typically more productive workers and we can presume that some portion of what makes a worker productive results from the fact that he avoids needless accidents. Finally, let's look at the relationship between intellect and unemployment. Men who are out of the labor force are in one way or the other unavailable for work; unemployed men, in contrast, want work but can't find it. Again, as with job disabilities, the very dull are six times more likely to be unemployed that the very bright. Considering men of average age and socioeconomic background, the chances of being unemployed was only 4 percent for those with IQs in the upper 98th centile of intelligence while it was 15 percent for those with IQs in the lowest 2d centile of IQ. Similar studies have shown that neither, parental SES or age had a statistically significant independent effect in the unemployment rates of either high school or college graduates. Basically, all studies to date show that IQ is, by far and away, the most important determinant of whether a male in employed, unemployed or disabled (or claims to be disabled). Comment: I contend that the biggest mistake the social engineers have made in recent times is to refuse to recognize the importance of inherited IQ in every facet of modern American life. Those who, through no fault of their own, were born with below average IQs are going to have a difficult struggle in our present day high-tech world. Failing to understand that we are not all born equal in anything, and certainly not IQ, has resulted in a long line of social programs (school busing, affirmative action and head-start, to name only a few of the worst offenders) that have accomplished little or nothing while leaving us bankrupt. The Bell Curve is of great importance because it uncovers the primarily reason for our present economic and social problems, the falling intellect of our population at a time when intelligence and education are everything. As we will see shortly, lack of intellect also is a root cause of every single one of the social ills we are experiencing in our country today. Stay tuned, the worst is yet to come!

The Bell Curve Part 11 Chapter 5-Schooling

As late as 1940 less than 50 percent of 18-year-olds got a high school diploma. In the post war era, a high school diploma became the norm. Now not having one is a social disability of some gravity. While it is true that most dropouts are from poor families, among whites almost no one with an IQ in the top quarter of the distribution fails to get a high school education, no matter how poor their families. In fact the drop out is extremely rare throughout the upper half of the distribution. Socioeconomic background has its most powerful effect at the lowest end of the social spectrum among students who have below average intelligence. Being poor has a small effect on dropping out of school independent of IQ but it has a sizeable independent effect on whether a person finishes school with a regular diploma or receives only a high school equivalency certificate. When it comes to college these differences are accentuated. Youngsters from poor backgrounds with high IQS are likely to get through college these days, but those with low IQs are not, even if they come from well-to-do backgrounds. Of all the social behaviors that are linked to cognitive ability, school dropout prior to high school graduation is the most obvious. In this respect, low intelligence is one of the best predictors of school failure. "Dropping out" is a very recent concept. In 1900 only six percent of the population achieved a high school diploma and it wasn't until world war 11 that the graduation ratio passed the 50 percent mark. Today it is assumed that everyone will graduate from high school and a significant stigma is attached to 14 percent of dropouts who do not. Americans today take it for granted that the goal is to graduate everyone and believe that a school with a high dropout rate is a social evil. It was not always so. Voltaire's view that "the lower classes should be guided, not educated" was typical until the twentieth century. " We must turn back the clock," one prominent educator wrote in 1936, "to take back five million boys and girls from the educational dole." Yet when the psychometricians tried to document the commonly held fear that the country was trying to educate the ineducable they found little evidence to support the concept because, at that time, there was little difference in IQ between those who were educated and those who were not. Things changed drastically over the next half century as the percentage of the population who received a high school diploma increased from 30 percent to 85 percent. By the early 1950s there was a ten-point gap in IQ between dropouts and high school graduates. By 1960, when 70 percent of the students were graduating, the gap had grown to 16 IQ points and the intellectual rout was on! The following table reveals the shocking truth. Failure to Get a High School Education Among Whites Cognitive Class Percentage Who Do Not Graduate 1 Very Bright 0 11 Bright 0 111 Normal 6 1V Dull 35 V Very Dull 55 Overall Average 9 Interestingly, nearly half of those in Class V, with IQs of 75 of under, were able to get a high school education even though they were borderline (or beyond) the clinical definition of retarded. Which raises the question of what does a high school education mean? Researchers commonly lump together those who attained a high school diploma with those who passed an equivalency examination (GED) when addressing the subject of high school dropout. However, the resent work of Cameron and Heckman have clearly demonstrated that GED youths are not equivalent to normal high school graduates in their employment rates, job tenure and wages. This is not too surprising considering that the NLSY study showed that white GEDs had an average IQ half a standard deviation lower than that for white high school graduates. To put these statistics in perspective, approximately 5 percent of the young people today get a GED. Before addressing the significance of having a high school diploma or a QED further, let's compare the students who got a normal high school diploma with permanent dropouts, those who left school never to return or get a GED. The high school dropout is commonly thought of as a bright, but unlucky, youngster whose talents were wasted because of economic disadvantage or an inept school system that could not hold him. Among whites hardly anyone in the NLSY fit that description. In fact, only three-tenths of one percent met a realist definition of a gifted but disadvantaged dropout. Even if we include everyone in the top half of the IQ distribution, but in the bottom half of the socioeconomic distribution, only 5.5 percent become permanent dropouts. The conclusion is indisputable. With rare exception, young people drop of school because they are dumb not because they are disadvantaged. For temporary dropouts who eventually get a GED it is a different story. In this case the socioeconomic status of the parents is more important than the IQ of the dropout. There are three reasons for this. First, middle and upper- class parents find it unthinkable that their children drop out of high school- find a special school, call a therapist, do anything to keep the child in school. Second, working class parents are likely to urge their children to stay in school so they can do better than their parents. Finally there are the Pap Finns of American folklore who complain about their children wasting all that time on book learning. Although this chapter does not address the issue of black dropouts the belief among many blacks that "education is a white man's thing" speaks volumes to this issue. Now let's consider the role IQ and family background play in getting a college degree. As a general rule the relationship between IQ and educational attainment has been remarkably stable for the last half century. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale showed that the mean IQ of high school graduates was about 105, the mean of college graduates was 115 and the mean IQ of people getting medical degrees and Ph.D.s was around 125. These statistics, based on studies of IQ performed in the 1950s and 1960s are virtually identical to those gleamed from the NLSY study 20 years later. Both of these studies showed that the odds of getting a college degree were small if the person came from a poor background and had a low IQ. However, people who had very well placed parents had a 40 percent chance to get a bachelors degree even if they had only an average IQ. Finally, a person in the top 2 percent of IQ had more than a 75 percent chance of getting a degree even if he came from the lower middle class. To summarize, the number of young whites denied a college education because of adverse family background, exists to some degree, but it is of such small size that it does not constitute a public policy problem. Today, if you were lucky enough to have been born bright you are likely to become educated and succeed in life, irrespective of which side of the tracks you came from. If born not so bright, you will have difficulty achieving anything of significance even if you were born to wealthy parents. Comment: I believe this is the most important chapter in The Bell Curve because it explains why our flawed social policies has been such a dismal failure over the past 50 to 60 years. We have spent 22 trillion dollars in a vain attempt to lift the down-trodden by leveling the playing field. Although the authors do not make the connection, the material presented in this chapter shows why well meaning programs such as school busing and head-start largely were doomed to failure from the beginning. Not to recognize that IQ is the key to the golden kingdom and that intelligence is largely inherited and not a product of environmental factors has been a costly governmental mistake. As Einstein said, "To continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." I would conclude that our repeated attempts to educate the ineducable are the result of ignorance and blind stupidity!

The Bell Curve Part 11 Chapter 5-Poverty

Who becomes poor? It is commonly thought that people who are unlucky enough to be born to poor parents become poor. This was undoubtedly true in the beginning of the last century as discussed in previous chapters, but that is not the case today. At this point in time, whites with IQs at the bottom 5 percent of the distribution are fifteen times more likely to be poor than those with IQs in the top 5 percent. Today, if you have a choice it is much better to be born smart than rich. A white youth reared in a home in which the parent or parents were chronically unemployed, worked at only menial jobs, and had not gotten past the ninth grade, but had an average IQ of 100, has a 90 percent chance of being out of poverty by his or her thirtieth birthday. Conversely, a white child born to a solid middle class family, but with a below average IQ, faces a much higher risk of poverty, despite his more fortunate background. When compared to sex, marital status and years of education, intelligence remains the most important predictor of economic success, with marital status running a close second. Let's see why this is so. The authors of The Bell Curve begin with poverty because it is so much the center of concern with respect to our social problems. In 1939, over half of all Americans lived in families with incomes below the poverty line (by today's standards and in constant dollars). The levels of poverty continued to fall during the next 30 years reaching its lowest point of 10 percent in 1970. At that point, the numbers living in poverty began to slowly increase again and reached 15.5 percent by 2013. There are three lessons to be learned from this history. First, poverty cannot be a simple direct cause of problems like crime, illegitimacy and drug use because these forms of anti-social behavior were minor when poverty was endemic in the middle of the last century. In dead, if poverty were the root of these evils the history of the twentieth century would have chronicled their sharp decline. Second, the poor, as a group, have changed over time. As late as the 1940s the poor were indistinguishable from other members of the population except for the fact that they were poor. As poverty shrunk from over 50 percent of the population in the 1940s to less than 15 percent as it has been since the 1960s the people left behind are likely to be disproportionately those who suffer, not only from bad luck, but also from lack of energy, thrift, farsightedness, determination and, most importantly, brains. Finally, the poverty rate had been decreasing steadily for three decades prior to President Johnson's famous war on poverty began in the 1960s. Despite the trillions of dollars spent to eradicate poverty it has actually increased over the past 55 years from its low point of 10 percent in 1970. Just why is that? The first question the authors attempt to answer is possibly the most important. Can an IQ score taken at age 15 be a cause of poverty at age 30? What exactly does an intelligence test score mean for an adolescent who has grown up poor? Wouldn't his test score have been higher if his luck in home environment had been better? Yes, of course, the IQ of a given individual might have been 20 to 40 percent higher if he had been raised under more favorable circumstances. This issue is discussed in more detail in a later chapter, but for the purposes of Part 11 the question is not what might have been, but what is. The test scores for the NLSY sample were obtained when the subjects were 15 to 23 years in age and follow-up studies have shown that their initial IQ scores were already as deeply rooted a fact about them as were their height and eye color. From the mid-1800s to the 1960s poor people were divided into two groups, the deserving and the undeserving. Some people were thought to be poor because of circumstances beyond their control and others were poor because of circumstance under their control. This all changed in the 1960s, at that point poverty was viewed as a product of broad systemic causes which largely were beyond the individuals control. Much of the literature at that time focused on blacks and its roots in racism and does not apply to the topic at hand: poverty among non-Latino whites. In any case, data compiled in 1989 reveled that the poverty rate was similar, and low, in the 75 percent of the population who had normal or above average intelligence (cognitive classes-normal, bright and very bright). More importantly, in this large group of young people, those with differing socioeconomic backgrounds had similar low rates of poverty, which varied from 2 to 6 percent. This showed that those with only normal intelligence usually escaped poverty irrespective of the socioeconomic status of their parents. This was not the case for the dull and very dull who made up the bottom 25 percent of the cognitive ladder. Sixteen percent of those in the dull cognitive class were in poverty while a full 30 percent of those who tested very dull were impoverished. Thus, of the 25 percent of the population that tested dull or very dull, a whopping 45 percent were in poverty. Regression analysis was used to determine how much poverty depended on three independent variables: IQ, age and parental socioeconomic status (SES) in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). The analysis showed, as expected, that age was not important in determining whether a person was impoverished once the other factors of intelligence and family background were taken into account. This left two possible explanations for the observation that some ended up impoverished and some did not: the socioeconomic environment in which the NLSY youth grew up and his IQ score. The first line of the graft shown on page 134 of The Bell Curve shows that only 2 percent of those with IQs of 130 or higher ended up in poverty while 26 percent of those with IQs of 70 or lower were impoverished. The second line shows the chances of being impoverished as parental SES goes from very low to very high. Only 11 percent of those who grew up in abject poverty ended up impoverished themselves, while the poverty rate of those from very wealthy homes was less than 2 percent. This data suggests that, with few exceptions, a person ends up in poverty not because he was born poor but because he was born stupid. To put this in policy terms, the starting line remains unequal in American society, even among whites, but the magnitude of the disadvantage is not as large as one might expect. For example, a white person with an average IQ of only 100 born in 1961 to impoverished uneducated parents had only a 11 percent chance of being impoverished at age 28. Thus, there is a 89 percent chance that children will escape from the chains of poverty irrespective of the SES of their parents. The chances of becoming impoverished fall to slim to done for white children who were born with above average intelligence. Conversely, suppose a person was born to parents with average SES but was very dull. There is a 26 percent chance that this person will in poverty at age 28, more than twice as great as the odds facing the person from a deprived home but with average intellect. In summary, low intelligence equates to comparatively high risk of poverty. Now let's consider the role that education might play in poverty. The basis fact is simple, people who have a bachelors degree have average or above average IQs and seldom if ever end up impoverished, no matter the SES of their parents. For those with only a high school diploma the results are quite different. A young adult with only a high school diploma and a low IQ has a 24 percent chance of living in poverty while a high school graduate with a high IQ has less than a 2 percent chance of becoming impoverished. What about the growing number of poor who are children? As of 1991, 22 percent of all children under the age of 15 were below the official poverty line, twice the poverty rate of those 15 or older. It is commonly thought that poverty among children is something that has increased across the board in the United States, for all kinds of families, for reasons vaguely related to economic troubles, ungenerous social policies during the 1980s and, of course, discrimination against women and minority groups. Poverty among children always has been much higher in families headed by a single women, whether she is divorced or never married. In 1991 the poverty rate for single women was 36 percent; for all other American families, 6 percent. This statistic hasn't changed much since official poverty figures first became available in 1959. Now let's consider the role of the mother's IQ in childhood poverty. The figure on page 138 of The Bell Curve shows the role of the mother's IQ in determining which white children are poor. The graft shows that 70 percent of the children of single white women with very low IQs live in poverty while the chances of a child living in poverty if his mother has a high IQ is only 10 percent. If a single white mother has an average IQ there is a 33 percent chance her children will be impoverished. The children of married white mothers fair much better even if the married mother is markedly below average in cognitive ability. Interestingly, it makes little difference which kind of "non-marriage" we are talking about- separation, divorce or never married at all. The chances of childhood poverty in these three groups were drastically different from the results of married women and quite similar to each other. The above graft showed the effect the unmarried mother's IQ had on the childhood poverty rate if the mother's socioeconomic background were held constant. The graft on following page shows that the mother's SES background played only a minor role, if any, in determining whether the children of single white mothers would live in poverty. Comment: A major theme in United States public policy for the past 55 years has been that socioeconomic disadvantage is the driving force behind poverty. The statistics provided in this chapter show that this isn't so for whites. To the contrary, the high rates of poverty in certain segments of the white non-Latino population are determined more by intelligence than by socioeconomic background. Interestingly, the poverty rates for low IQ whiles of 30 percent is similar to the incidence of poverty in poor urban neighborhood comprised mostly of blacks and Latinos. Thus, these impoverished whites become poor despite the fact that they are supposed to be advantaged Americans because of their white skin and European decent. Why? Because they have one thing working against them: they are not very smart! It, of course, is not their fault: they were born dumb. Many, if not most, readers will conclude that the authors have made the case for sweeping policy changes to rectify what can only be interpreted as a palpably unfair result. And, indeed they have. The overriding issue is not so much how people who are poor, through no fault of their own, can be made not poor: rather, the goal should be to find a way that we all can live together is a society in which all of us, irrespective of inherited intelligence and socioeconomic background, can pursue and achieve some degree of happiness and, most importantly, that feeling of self worth so essential to the mental well being of all humans. I cover this subject extensively in my book America In Decline- Causes and Solutions. I suggest several rather simple solutions to the problems that face modern America. None of these commonsense

remedies will break the bank! For example, rather than paying welfare mother to have illegitimate children, as we do now, we should be paying them a stipend to have a Norplant injection that will prevent pregnancy for five years. Such a policy would reduce the rate of illegitimacy, lower the crime rate and reduce the incidence of poverty. Like if you agree.

The Bell Curve Part 11 Introduction: Cognitive Classes and Social Behavior

Part 1 dealt with the positive outcomes that result from having an higher than average intellect or possibly an IQ in the stratosphere. In Part 11 Herrnstein and Murray discuss the various ways differing levels of cognitive relate to America's most pressing social problems. As one might expect, high cognitive ability is generally associated with socially desirable behaviors while low intelligence usually is associated with less desirable ones. The authors point out that "generally associated with" does not mean "coincident with." For most of the topics they address, cognitive ability accounts for only a small to middling variation among people. Thus, you cannot predict what a person will do solely from his IQ. However, large variations in social behavior separate differing groups of people when the groups differ intellectually on average. The authors will argue in the upcoming pages of The Bell Curve that intelligence itself, not just its correlation with social status, is responsible the observed group differences in the antisocial behaviors that plague our nation today. The material to be addressed will be controversial. For example, is low intelligence responsible for irresponsible childbearing and bad parenting behaviors. Most scholars in childbearing and parenting do not think so. Could low intelligence be the cause of unemployment or poverty? Only a smattering of economists have even considered the possibility. This neglect points to a gaping hole in the state of knowledge about social behavior. In is not that cognitive ability has been considered and found inconsequential; rather it is that the relationship of social behavior and intellect has barely been considered at all! Until a few years ago there were no answers to many of the questions that are addressed in The Bell Curve, or only very murky ones. No one knew what the relationship of intellect to illegitimacy might be or even the connection of cognitive ability to poverty. Despite the millions of mental test given, few of the systemic surveys performed, and sometimes none, were designed to allow analysts to determine how IQ was related to a given behavior. In coming to their conclusions concerning intellect and social and economic outcomes, the authors rely heavily on the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth (NLSY). The study, which began in 1979, followed 12,686 young people aged 14 to 22 and the data presented in The Bell Curve was compiled in 1990. Sociologists have broken down measured intellect into five classes shown in the table below. The range in IQ is 50 at the low (very dull) end of the distribution and 150 at the high (very bright) end of the distribution. By convention the average or mean IQ of distribution is set at 100. Class IQ range classification % of population 1 125-150 Very bright 5 2 110-125 Bright 20 3 90-110 Normal 50 4 75-90 Dull 20 5 50-75 Very dull 5 Realize that those of you who have read The Bell Curve or have followed this review on my blog, live in a world that most likely looks nothing like the one depicted by this distribution (bell curve). In all likelihood, your friends and associates belong in class 1 and whose you consider to be unusually bright would be in the top one percent of the distribution while those who you consider to be unusually slow are somewhere in class 11. Most likely you have never encountered a person with an IQ between 50 and 75 unless, of course, you watch the nightly news on MSNBC (my conclusion, not the authors). The basis tool for studying something in the social sciences is called regression analysis. There is a result to explain, for example poverty, called the dependent variable. The things that might cause poverty (educational disadvantage, inadequate nutrition, low IQ etc.) are called the independent variables. Regression analysis tells us how much each of the independent variables actually affects the result, in this case poverty, taking into consideration all of the different things that might be expected to cause poverty. The book, The Bell Curve, is all about the relationship of inherited intelligence to behavior. After observing a statistical relationship between a behavior like childbearing or unemployment to intelligence the next question that comes to mind is, What else might be the source of the relationship? In the case of IQ, the first thing that springs to mind is socioeconomic status. To what extent is an observed relationship, like intellect and illegitimacy really founded on the environmental factors under which a person grew up (the parents socioeconomic status), rather than his inherited intelligence? Why is this important? Here's why. If the independent relationship of IQ to a social behavior is small, there is no point in pursuing the issue further. However, if the role of IQ remains large irrespective of socioeconomic status (environmental factors) inherent in a social behavior then it is worth thinking about because it may cast past public policy (school bussing, head-start etc.) in a new light and, by so doing, avoid costly mistakes in the future. In the next eight chapters the authors limit their studies of intellect to social behavior to non-Latino whites. They do this to strengthen their central point, that cognitive ability effects social behavior without regard to race or ethnicity. The influence of race and ethnicity are the subject matter of Part 111. Comment: We are about to enter a forbidden place where only a few brave hearts have been willing to venture, the land of extreme political incorrectness. Many, if not most, of the population today find it impossible to believe that we humans were not all born equal in all things. To them leveling the playing field, especially in educational opportunities, is the key to all of the social ills we face. Our country has squandered $22 trillions of dollars trying to make things right, equal, over the past 50 or so years in an vain effort to help the down-trodden, all to know avail. One does not have to be an Einstein to realize that the more we have invested the worse our social problems have become.

The Bell Curve Chapter 4 Steeper Ladders, Narrower Gates.

Cognitive partitioning by intellect, education and occupation is here to stay, and, try as it may, there is little the government can do about it. In days gone by a relatively low IQ laborer could make a decent living tamping ties on a railroad, digging ditches, or cutting brush from the side of a county road. Now days machines perform these menial tasks. The low IQ laborer of yesterday likely was working side-by-side with people of higher intelligence who, because of the lack of job opportunities, were performing the same type of work. More importantly, in times past workers with differing IQs lived in the same neighborhoods; sent their children to the same schools; worshiped in the same church; and played in the same baseball team on Sunday afternoon. Economic segregation has changed all that. Today, computers and electronic communication make it increasingly likely that people who work primarily with their minds collaborate and work only with others like them. The isolation of the cognitive elite is compounded by their choices of where to live, shop, play, worship, and send their children to school. When all is said and done, success and failure in today's high-tech American economy, and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit from their parents. Intellectual stratification is compounded by assortative mating, the fact that likes attract when it comes to marriage. Not surprisingly, intelligence is one of the most important of these likes. Assortative mating by IQ is having a more powerful effect on society with each passing generation and is the basis of a new American class system. What will be the ultimate outcome of cognitive stratification? In this chapter Herrnstein and Murray use available scientific data to peer into a murky future. The overriding dynamic in the work place today is the increasing value of intelligence. The "smart ones" are more effectively being recruited to college; they are more productive in the workplace; and their dollar value to employers is increasing with each new technological invention. There is no reason to believe that this trend will not continue and, if it does, the economic gap separating the upper cognitive classes from the rest of society will continue. The statistics that follow reveal the enormity of the problem. In 1930 Manufacturing employees earned around $10,000 a year while the salaries of Engineers averaged around $28,000 (in 1990 dollars). By 1986 the salaries of Manufacturing workers had a little more than doubled to $22,000 a year while the wages paid engineers had nearly tripled to $72,000. Most of these economic changes occurred from 1953 to 1961 when the salaries of engineers doubled while the wages paid manufacturing workers increased by only 20 percent. In recent times the experts have come to agree that something beyond education, gender and work experience has been at work to increase the disparity in income observed in the workplace. This unexplained disparity in income is termed "the residual." The demand for this "residual" rather than education or job experience fueled the wage disparity observed by economists during the last two decades of the twentieth century. What is this factor called "residual?" It could be rooted in diligence, ambition, sociability or cognitive ability. Readers will not be surprised to learn that Herrnstein and Murray believe that cognitive ability plays a major role in the observed disparity in wages between workers with similar educational backgrounds. The authors point out that the changes in wages are, in part, a result of the shifting occupational structure of our economy. High paying jobs are tipped toward people with high intelligence and, as high-end jobs have become more numerous, demand has increased for the intellectual abilities they require. When demand for any good, in the case intelligence, goes up the price for the commodity increases. Purely on economic grounds, wage inequality grew as the economic demand for intelligence climbed during the last half of the twentieth century. Why has cognitive ability become more valuable for employers? As technology has increased so has the economic value of intelligence. As robots replace factory workers the factory workers' jobs vanish and are replaced by people who can design, program and repair robots. Most of these new hires have higher IQs than the original factory workers they replaced. Business consultancy also is a new profession that is soaking up the graduates of elite business schools. The consultants sell their trained intelligence to the businesses paying their huge fees. The high school graduate doesn't have a prayer in this market place. A second reason intelligent people make so much money may be traced to the growth of the post second world war economy in the United States and throughout the world. The size of corporations and the markets they serve have grown enormously since World War11. The value of a bright person who can dream up a sales campaign worth another percentage point or two in market share for a corporation competing in a $500,000 market might be worth a salary on $75,000 a year. If the same person designed a similar successful marketing plan for a fortune 500 company with billions of dollars in potential sales he would be worth a fortune to the company and his salary would be enormous. Now consider the effects of regulation and regulation. Why do lawyers who never set foot in a courtroom make so much money? In some cases because a first rate lawyer can make tens of millions of dollars for a client by getting a favorable decision from a government agency or slipping through a tax loophole. As the rules governing private enterprise become more complex, intelligence grows in value, often in unexpected places. For example, social psychologists who serve on advisers on jury selection make big bucks because their input raises the possibility of a favorable verdict in liability and patent law suits about 10 percent. Once again proving that intelligence is worth big bucks. The more complex a society becomes, the more valuable are people who are good at dealing with complexity and the more likely it is that those with less intelligence will be left behind to fight over the few low paying jobs that remain. Think of it this way. The son of father whose income is in the bottom of the distribution has only one chance in twenty of rising to the top fifth of the earning distribution and a fifty-fifty chance of remaining in the bottom fifth. At present, most people are stuck near where their parents were on the income scale because IQ, which has become the major predictor of income potential, is passed on from one generation to the next in the same way as athletic ability; a propensity to develop breast cancer; or the odds of developing diabetes are inherited traits. Social engendering programs like school busing, affirmative action and, more recently, head start cannot change this circumstance significantly. OK, just how much is IQ just a matter of genes? In truth, the present state of knowledge does not permit a precise measurement but a half century of work and hundreds of empirical and theoretical studies permits a broad conclusion that the genetic component of IQ is unlikely to be smaller than 40 percent or higher than 80 percent. The most unambiguous direct estimates, base on identical twins raised apart, produce the highest estimates of intellectual heritability. If one adopts a middling estimate of 60 percent heritability this means that 40 percent of our intelligence is a result of environmental factors such as social status, schooling, nutrition and marital status of the parents. But, Just how reliable are the various tests of heritability? First, the heritability of any trait can be estimated as long as its variation in the population can be measured. IQ tests meet this criteria handily since they are accurate and reproducible, of that there is no disagreement. Second, heritability tells you more about a population as a whole than it does about single individuals. In this respect, a given individual's IQ may have been greatly affected by his special circumstances even though IQ is substantially heritable in the population as a whole. Third, the heritability of a trait may change as the components of intelligence that are not inherited change (the 40 percent of intelligence that are a result of environmental factors change). If, one hundred years ago, the variations in exposure to education were greater than they are now and, if education is one of the environmental factors responsible for differences in intellect, then the heritability of IQ was lower in 1900 than it is now when educational opportunities are more readily available to the population as a whole. This last point is especially important in modern societies, with their intense efforts to equalize opportunity. As a general rule, as environmental factors become more uniform, the component of intellect that is inherited increases. To understand this important point consider this. If we were all raised in identical environments the differences in IQ between individuals would be exclusively due to heritability, the genes that we inherited from our parents. This is one of the most important ironies of egalitarianism: the more uniform a society becomes the more similar family members are to each other intellectually and the more variation in IQ there is between members of different families. Now let's take a look at love, marriage and IQ. Contrary to common belief, opposites do not really attract when it comes to love and marriage. In fact quite the opposite is true. Of all the correlations between husbands and wives one of the highest is IQ. Smart people tend to marry smart people of the opposite sex, it's really as simple as that! The propensity to mate by cognitive ability has not changed over the years. However, is you compare 100 Harvard/Radcliffe marriages from the class of 1930 with 100 similar marriages in 1965 things have changed markedly. The marriages in 1990 will produce children with considerably higher IQs than did the marriages in 1930 because the level of intelligence a Harvard and Radcliffe has risen so dramatically over the intervening 60 years. How much difference can it make you might ask? In 1930 the mean IQ of a graduate from either Harvard or Radcliffe was around 117 and the average IQ of their children was about 114. By 1965 the children of Harvard and Radcliffe graduates had mean IQs around 124. These figures are based on the assumption that the propensity to marry by cognitive remained the same from 1930 to 1965, in reality it almost certainly increased as shown by Robert Mare's study of assortative mating at the University of Wisconsin from 1940 to 1987. During this period the chances of a college graduate marrying a non-college graduate fell from 44 percent to 33 percent. There were several reasons for this. First the feminist movement drastically increased the odds that bright young women would come in contact with bright young men during the years when people choose spouses. At the same time many of the elite men's collages became coeducational. Finally, the effect of churning. American society has historically been full of churning as newcomers came to the country and worked their way up the economic ladder while the children and grandchildren of the rich and powerful were descending the ladder. In contrast today, because of intellectual sorting we have a society that is becoming increasingly quiescent at the top as the cognitive elite move up the income ladder and stay there, resulting in a society that takes on some of the characteristics of a caste. We are not quite there yet since fewer that 60 percent of those in the top quartile of intelligence complete a masters degree. On the other side of the coin, by 1990, 81 percent of those in the top 5 percent of IQ had obtained at least a masters degree. To make things worse, 5 percent of those who did not have educational degrees were college dropouts like the Bill Gates of the world who were making their way up the economic ladder without a college degree. These people, because of their high intellect, were living the life of the rich and famous despite the fact that they were relatively uneducated, demonstrating that intellect, not education, is the key to the fame, success and riches in twenty-first century America. This, of course, does not mean that education is unimportant to the average person; rather, it means that really smart people can succeed without it. What are the implications of all this? The cognitive elite, irrespective of race or environmental background, are getting richer while everyone else is struggling just to stay even or, as too often is the case, falling behind. The cognitive elite are increasingly segregated from everyone else in both the work place and the neighbor hood. Finally, and of major importance, the cognitive elite are increasingly likely to marry. Comment: This is the closing chapter of Part 1 of The Bell Curve. It's message is clear, the coin of the day is intellect, approximately 60 percent of which is inherited from our parents and 40 percent, at most, is the result of environmental factors. Theoretically, the IQs of those who are disadvantaged can be raised by social programs designed to level the playing field (school busing, dead-start, school meals etc.). The authors do not address the success or failure of social programs designed to remove unfairness from society and provide equal opportunity for all; however, they do point out that, by providing education to the masses, we have developed a society that is becoming more segregated with each passing day not by race or religion, but by intellect. Part 11 deals with the societal consequences of being born not all that smart in an increasingly high-tech world where, with few exceptions, is the key to the golden kingdom.