Open immigration, IQ, and the fate of nations

Unsurprisingly, Third-World immigration is lowering the mean IQ of the Western nations and, thereby, lowering their per capita domestic product as well, according to the writer who calls himself La Griffe du Lion. The article is for readers with advanced math, but it provides a summary of its main points which I quote below. I had earlier questioned the author’s assertion that the mean IQ of the Third World (meaning the non-white world sans northern Asia) is 85. Not only did that seem much too low to me, but the author only mentions four Third-World national groups, and on that basis asserts that the overall Third-World mean IQ is 85. However, I am informed by Richard Lynn, the foremost expert on comparative international IQ studies, that that is the case. Prof. Lynn writes to me: “It is correct that most of the third world has an IQ of about 85 except in sub-Saharan Africa where it is about 70. This is one of the world’s best kept secrets.” Here is the summary of the Griffe du Lion article:

1. A Western country may be approximated as a nation composed of two distinct populations, one indigenous, the other Third-World, differing in mean IQ by approximately one standard deviation.

2. In standard deviation units, a Western country with a Third-World population fraction, f, has a mean IQ of -f. [LA note: In other words, if, using his assumption of a full SD difference, Third-Worlders, not counting northern Asians, made up .25 of the U.S. population, the mean IQ of the U.S. would be .25 of a standard deviation lower than it would otherwise have been. So, if the white mean IQ is 100, and the black and Third-World mean IQ is 85, and if blacks and Third-Worlders are 25 percent of the population, the mean IQ of the country is 96.25 instead of the 100 it would be if America were all white. If the black and Third-World population become half the population (and oh, how people on both the left and the “right” anticipate that day), the mean national IQ becomes 92.5.]

3. Per capita GDP declines linearly with the Third-World immigrant population fraction.

4. Each percentage point increase in the Third-World immigrant population, will eventually cause the per capita GDP of a Western nation to drop by approximately 0.76 percent of its zero-immigrant value.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 16, 2005 04:53 PM | Send