National IQs
'How does your country measure up?'
An interesting website which compiles IQs of 185 countries with relation to their national wealth or poverty.
Dec 11, 2005

(Littlespeck: Intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a number (or score) of a person's intelligence based on a test that consists of a series of mental tasks arranged in order of difficulty. Most intelligence tests include tasks involving memory, reasoning, definitions, numerical ability, and recalling facts. Individually, a normal person is said to be 100; a nation's average would be read differently).

National IQs Based on the Results of Intelligence Tests and Estimated National IQs (excerpts)

By RICHARD LYNN
University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and
TATU VANHANEN
University of Helsinki, Finland

Countries with IQ of 100 or higher
107 - Hong Kong
106 - South Korea
105 - Japan
104 - Taiwan
102 - Austria, Italy, Germany, Netherlands
101 - Switzerland, Sweden, Luxembourg
100 - Belgium, China, New Zealand, Singapore. United Kingdom.

IQs 99 - 90
99 - Spain, Hungary, Poland9,
98 - USA, Australia, Norway, France, Denmark
97 - Czech Republic, Canada, Finland
96 - Russia, Uruguay, Argentina, Slovakia 96,
95 - Slovenia, Portugal
94 - Israel, Romania
93 - Ireland, Armenia, Bulgaria
92 - Greece, Malaysia 92
91 - Thailand
90 - Turkey, Croatia, Peru, Croatia.

Some interesting extracts:

* The causes of the inequalities in income and wealth between nations have been discussed for some two and a half centuries. In 1776 this problem was discussed by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, in which he proposed that the skills of the population are the principal factor responsible for national differences in incomes and wealth.

* The IQ of Singapore has been calculated in the same way by weighting the IQs of the ethnic groups (Malays, Chinese and Indians in Singapore) by their numbers in the population.

* There is a straightforward explanation for the positive association between IQ and incomes at both the individual and population level. The major reason for this association is that people with high IQs can acquire complex skills that command high earnings and that cannot be acquired by those with low IQs.

* Nations whose populations have high IQs tend to have efficient economies at all levels from top and middle management through skilled and semi-skilled workers. These nations are able to produce competitively goods and services for which there is a strong international demand and for which there is therefore a high value, and that cannot be produced by nations whose populations have low IQs.

* In addition, nations whose populations have high IQs will have intelligent and efficient personnel in services and public sector employment that contributes indirectly to the strength of the economy such as teachers, doctors, scientists and a variety of public servants responsible for the running of telephones, railroads, electricity supplies and other public utilities.

* Finally, nations whose populations have high IQs are likely to have intelligent political leaders who manage their economies effectively. Skilled economic management is required to produce the right conditions for economic growth, such as keeping interest rates at the optimum level to produce full employment with minimum inflation, maintaining competition, preventing the growth of monopolies, controlling crime and corruption, and promoting education, literacy and numeracy and vocational training.

* A major additional factor is the economic form of organisation consisting of whether countries have market or socialist economies.

* The countries that have the largest positive residuals and therefore have higher per capita income than would be predicted from their IQs are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Israel, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States.
With the exception of Qatar and South Africa, all of these are technologically highly developed market economy countries and their higher than predicted per capita incomes can be attributed principally to this form of economic organisation.

* The Asian economic crisis in 1998 may have increased the negative residuals of the Philippines and Thailand temporarily.

Source: http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp