National IQ levels drops as clever women spurn motherhood

National IQ levels drops as clever women spurn motherhood

By L.E. Nugroho

BANDUNG (JP): There are two population trends worth
discussing. One is that of smarter children coming from better-
educated families and the other is of women graduates remaining
unmarried or having fewer children when they do marry. These two
trends are the results of completely different developments. One
can happen without the other. But when they occur together, the
outcome is a decline in the average intelligence level of the
population.

If smarter parents tend to produce smarter kids but fewer of
the smarter women are getting married (or have fewer kids when
they do marry) there must be proportionately fewer smarter people
in the future. This hypothesis is likely to be controversial, but
has been argued persuasively by a Harvard University
psychologist, Professor R.J. Herrnstein, the author of IQ and
Falling Birth Rates.

One theory defended by a number of researchers holds that
birth rates drop when a society modernizes. One of the corollary
effects is to free women from the cultural pressures that force
them towards motherhood. Women become less dependent on men and
more free to choose their own lifestyle. They will, if the theory
is right, choose to have fewer children. They can just say no.

This theory implies a differential fall in fertility within a
society. The number of offspring may decrease most among more
intelligent women, since they are most aware of the costs of
motherhood. Women from the higher social strata -- and more
intelligent women -- are also likely to have fewer children
because they are more likely to find rewarding occupations other
than, and competing with, motherhood.

Prof. Herrnstein quotes a study which concluded that average
IQ levels in the U.S. have fallen by an equivalent of four to
five points over the period when successful American women were
having fewer babies. This might not seem large, but a five-
point drop in average IQ levels translates into a 60 percent
reduction in the number of those with an IQ over 130 and a
similar increase in those with IQ scores below 70.

In contrast, the Japanese population has a higher average IQ
than the American. This, Prof. Herrnstein postulates, might be
because upper-class, educated Japanese women do not have fewer
children than those from lower down the social ladder. In public
discussion this IQ differential is usually attributed to the
superiority of Japanese schools, but the difference is already
present in the earliest years of primary school. The IQ
comparison test result between Japanese and American pre-school
children will also prove this.

As a rule of thumb, better educated people in a modern society
are more intelligent, as measured by standard tests, and vice
versa -- chiefly because societies usually invest educational
resources in the people who make the best use of them, and that
usually means the people with the highest IQ scores.

Whether or not one approves of it, education and intelligence
are thus correlated -- but they are not identical. Occupational
success in modern societies is linked to education. For decades
study after study has shown that people who do well in school are
more likely also to do well socio-economically.

Therefore, one line of reasoning goes, the key to productivity
and individual achievement is education rather than individual
traits that predict educational success. This reasoning was
challenged by Prof. Herrnstein. His study shows a different
picture.

From 1900 to the present, the proportion of the American
population completing high school rose from 10 percent to over 70
percent. About half of all high school graduates went to college.
Germany and Japan fall short of the American figure, graduating
fewer than 70 percent of their high school students and admitting
far fewer of those graduates to college. Similarly, American
school teachers have, on average, more years of post-secondary
education than teachers anywhere else.

While America has been sending more people to school, it has
been losing ground in work productivity. Independent studies have
shown that Japanese and German workers have a higher work
productivity rate compared with their American counterparts. The
question now is, is it the education or intelligence which has a
direct correlation with the workers' productivity level?

We know now, to our regret, that something more fundamental
than schooling is behind work productivity. Overturning
conventional wisdom, recent studies show that variations in
intelligence predict job productivity to an extraordinary degree.
Prof. Herrnstein shows one study which compared intelligence-test
scores with 10 other plausible predictors of productivity (i.e.
job tryout, biographical inventory, reference check, experience,
interview, training and experience ratings, academic achievement,
education, interest, and age) of entry-level employees in a
variety of occupations. All the variables, except age, had some
predictive validity, but intelligence scores, with a validity
coefficient of 0.53 (1.0 is the maximum), had the most. Near the
bottom, with coefficients of 0.11 and 0.10, were academic
achievement and education respectively. For employees already in
a job, intelligence scores predicted performance after promotion
as well as, or better than, measures based on past performance.

Educational level may be a better predictor than intelligence
for occupational attainment as many studies have shown, but for
occupational performance, intelligence is the better predictor by
far.

It's like talking about men in command and men in action.
Prof. Herrnstein concludes that IQ scores are a reliable
predictor of how well a person is likely to do in hundreds of
common occupations. They show that almost 25 percent of the
difference in job performance between one person and another can
be accounted for by the difference in their IQ levels. This has
serious consequences for the economic performance of a country
since the job performance of workers has a direct bearing on how
competitive the economy is.

The competing ideals of equality and efficiency create a
dilemma. The goal of efficient production competes with the goal
of a more equal distribution of wealth. What has happened to the
rest of the population with mediocre intelligence? Many other
factors apart from intelligence can be used to improve their
productivity. Those factors include integrity, the drive to
succeed and the ability to work hard under pressure.

As an economy develops, skills, apart from intellectual
ability, will be in greater demand, and attract higher salaries.

In the meantime, other factors might work to improve
competence levels all round: school teaching methods and
facilities could be improved so as to develop the very
intellectual skills that are so predictive of productivity, and
perhaps to further other social purposes. We should be conscious
of how public policy interacts, not just with education, but also
with other influences on the intellectual quality of the
population, such as the differential in the fertility rates of
women of different intelligence. Nothing is more private than the
decision to bear children, yet society has a vital interest in
the aggregate effects of those decisions.

This issue demands informed public consideration, and probably
also public action to lessen the tension between parenthood and
one's career. At the very least, we should stop telling bright
young women that they make poor use of their lives by bearing and
raising children.