EvMick
DEMONSTRATING THE VALUE OF INTELLIGENCE
Innate intelligence -- rather than environmental and social
factors -- largely determines how much people will earn, claims
Charles Murray in a new report from the American Enterprise
Institute.
His findings, contained in the study "Income Inequality and IQ,"
are based on an analysis of 2,859 young adult sibling pairs. The
pairs were raised in the same home and had the same parents, but
their Intelligence Quotients (IQs) differed.
o "Very bright" siblings, with IQs above 120, earned a
median of $33,500 a year -- $11,500 more than their
"normal" siblings, whose IQs ranged between 90 and 109.
o "Normal" siblings earned a median of $9,750 more than
their "very dull" siblings, whose IQs were less than 80
and who had median earnings of $7,500.
o Wondering what would happen to siblings if the very best
social advantages were introduced, Murray set up a
"utopian" sample -- siblings who spent 14 years in an
intact family with median earnings of $50,000 a year.
o The "utopian" siblings' earnings remained stratified by IQ
and were only slightly higher than their counterparts in
the general study.
The one exception was for "very dull" siblings. Those who grew
up in ideal settings earned 47 percent more than those who did
not.
The top IQ group in the study earned almost five times as much as
the bottom group.
The study points out the nearly insurmountable difficulties
involved in trying to eradicate income inequality.
Murray was the coauthor of the 1994 book, "The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life," written with
the late Richard Herrnstein.
Source: Cheryl Wetzstein, "IQ, Not Environment, Strongest Income
Factor," and Linda Seebach (Rocky Mountain News), "Roots of
Economic Inequality," both in Washington Times, April 28, 1998.
For more on Economic Issues go to
http://www.ncpa.org/pd/economy/ecoinc.html