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SES and IQ heritability

Thursday,  09/04/03  08:35 AM

Back-to-school pop quiz:  Why do poor children, and especially black poor children, score lower on average than their middle-class and white counterparts on IQ tests and other measures of cognitive performance?

That's the lead question in a Washington Post article about a new study by researchers at the University of Virginia.  This study appears to show that IQ heritability varies significantly with socioeconomic status (SES):

Until recently, [lead researcher Eric] Turkheimer and others said, research had indicated that the "heritability" of IQ - that is, the degree to which genes can explain the differences in IQ scores - completely dominated environmental influences.

But it turned out that virtually all those studies on the heritability of IQ had been done on middle-class and wealthy families.  Only when Turkheimer tested that assumption in a population of poor and mostly black children did it become clear that, in fact, the influence of genes on IQ was significantly lower in conditions of poverty, where environmental deficits overwhelm genetic potential.

Specifically, the heritability of IQ at the low end of the wealth spectrum was just 0.10 on a scale of zero to one, while it was 0.72 for families of high socioeconomic status.

The study itself used 320 pairs of twins.  Twin studies are great for this kind of research, because comparing the correlation of IQ between identical twins, which share environment and genes, with fraternal twins, which share environment but not genes, allows the degree of heritability to be accurately determined.

This would be a very important finding if true - and would go a long way toward explaining the surprisingly low average IQs of many third-world countries (see IQ and Populations for more).  It would also give hope to those who feel improving living conditions in poor countries would enable them to become competitive in the global workforce.

However, it is worth pointing out that this study contradicts earlier studies looking for the same thing.  The WP article mentions Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist with the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College of London, who has been seeking genes linked specifically to intelligence.  Plomin said his own unpublished work involving 4,000 pairs of twins has not produced the same results as Turkheimer's.  Similarly, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth study famously used as the basis for many of the conclusions drawn in Richard Herrnstein's and Charles Murray's classic book The Bell Curve did not find these correlations, despite specific efforts to correlate SES with IQ.

The U of V study does differ from other work in one important aspect.  Instead of seeking correlation between SES and IQ directly, the researchers were seeking correlation between SES and the heritability of IQ.  Why is this different?

Well, if SES and IQ correlate, and IQ is substantially heritable, then it implies that poor populations are stuck in a sort of vicious circle.  Their poorness implies low average IQ, and their low average IQ implies a low average IQ among their children, which in turn implies their children will be poor.  (That's an over-simplification, but first-order this is the result.)  That's a pretty tough circle to exit, especially if the poor populations also have a higher-than-average birthrate.

On the other hand, if SES and heritability of IQ correlate, then in poor populations IQ is not significantly heritable (the heritability figure of 0.10 means essentially there is no correlation from one generation to the next).  This would break the vicious circle.  Poor populations might indeed have a low average IQ, but their children need not if their socioeconomic conditions are improved.  This conclusion supports efforts such as Project Head Start, which attempts to improve the lot of poor young children by giving them food, books, and exposure to positive learning environments.

Despite this hopeful conclusion, it should be noted that studies which have attempted to validate the effect of Project Head Start have invariably suggested it is not helpful.  But again, these studies have measured correlation to IQ, not correlation to heritability of IQ.

As the article indicates, this research suggests a fruitful avenue for future study:

The next big challenge is to find out what it is about socioeconomic status - a measure that includes not only income but also parental education and occupational status - that contributes to [heritability of ] IQ, so social programs can more effectively boost those factors.

The WP article is balanced and well worth a read.  I'm going to try to get the study itself to learn more...

 


© 2003-2024 Ole Eichhorn

 

Thursday,  09/04/03  11:00 PM

BW: Time for Apple to Spread the Beat.  Encouragement, if any were needed, for Apple to proceed with the Windows version of their online music store...

You all know I'm an America's Cup aficionado.  Well, as benefits the most expensive sport on earth, Forbes has an article about the state of play: Sailing for the Gold.  The next cup will most likely be in the summer of 2007, at either Lisbon or Marseilles.  Sounds like a terrific excuse for a trip to Europe :)

Xeni Jardin attending Burning Man 2003, and filed this report, and posted these pictures.  Yeah, you want to know, What is Burning Man?  "Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind."  Oh.

Time did a recent cover on What's Next, which features What's Always Next?  Interestingly, many of these innovations which were predicted but never came to pass are now on the cusp of reality:

  • Videophones.  Look at all the cell phones with cameras.  Think video conferencing won't happen?
  • A Moon colony.  Okay, this is a little farfetched.  Still, I expect to see one in my lifetime.
  • Food in pills.  Well, it's here, but it just isn't quite as fun as a nice steak.
  • Cars that drive themselves.  Pretty darn close.
  • Jet packs.  This one is pretty far out there.  May never happen.
  • Moving sidewalks.  Probably not, but how about Segways :)

I'll be the one-millionth blogger to link this: The Ultimate Boy's Toy.  The Gibbs Aquada is a 100mph car which is also a 30mph boat.  Yeah, everyone wants one - but it's $200,000...

A little more affordable is this car from Sony Ericsson, which you can control with your bluetooth cellphone.

This is terrific!  CheeseburgerBrown on Traffic Zoology.  You've got to love any article about traffic which starts by quoting Richard Dawkins.  I can't do it justice here, please just read it.  [ via Cory Doctorow ]

This brings to mind one of my favorite passages from Godel, Escher, Bach, which remains my favorite book ever, in which Douglas Hofstadter invents a character named Aunt Hillary, a self-conscious ant- hill.  The underlying idea is that at one level an ant-hill is a bunch of ants running around, seemingly without purpose, while at a higher level they are best regarded as a single organism.  Way cool.

Maybe someday we really will have Moon colonies, and travel to Mars also.  In which case you might need The Traveler's Guide to Mars.  In the meantime you might read it just because it is a great overview of Mars, including the exploration history, the likely geologic evolution of the planet, and [of course] interesting places to visit while you're there.

Haight Speech: Depriving the Third World of Flush Toilets.  It sounds like a headline from the Onion, but this is serious, as is the International Dry-Toilet Conference.  And no, I am not making this up.

From Adam Curry: We take our soccer seriously in Holland.  A hilarious short movie.

That's all for now... more later.  Because I'm ready for some football!

 
 

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