Jason Richwine on IQ, Immigration, and Social Capital
By • 8/19/09A new scholar who is doing interesting work is Jason Richwine, a recent PhD graduate from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. As the AEI website informs us, Richwine’s area of specialization is the link between intelligence and public policy issues, including immigration. Richwine began publishing articles in current affairs magazines and websites this year. Although he never adopts an explicitly pro-white perspective, all of his articles have brought attention to topics that are crucial to this website: racial differences in intelligence, the failure of Hispanics to integrate into American society, and the relationship of intelligence to social and economic success.
One of Richwine’s achievements has been to calculate the average IQ of various immigrant groups—he has provided far more detail on this matter than any other research I am aware of. His estimates apparently come from his dissertation and have not been published yet, but Steve Sailer got hold of them and posted them on his blog. The results are, for the most part, predictable, as the IQs of most immigrant groups are approximately the same as those of their home countries: Mexican immigrants have an average IQ of only 82, which is below that of American blacks, and Northeast Asians’ IQ is 106. The only surprise is the IQ of Indians. The average Indian IQ is 81, but Indian immigrants to the US have an average IQ of 112, leading them to become the nation’s “new model minority”, as Richwine wrote in a Forbes article. Hopefully, Richwine will publish the details of his research on immigrant IQ somewhere soon.
Richwine recently published in National Review a useful overview of American-born Hispanics’ failure to achieve socioeconomic parity with whites, a fact that will be well known to readers of this site, but which urgently needs to be publicized to the rest of the nation. Unfortunately, while Richwine is willing to discuss the high intelligence of Indians, low Hispanic intelligence is not mentioned in this article. So far in his published work on immigrant IQ, Richwine seems to be guided by the maxim that if you can’t say something nice, you shouldn’t say anything at all.
Richwine’s most original work is his other recent article, published on The American, on the relationship between intelligence and morality. Richwine works with Robert Putnam’s concept of “social capital,” which designates social networks based on trust and reciprocity. Putnam has found that cultures with high levels of social capital tend to be more economically successful and generally happier than those with low levels of trust. Where social capital is greater, Putnam says, “children grow up healthier, safer, and better educated; people live longer, happier lives; and democracy and the economy work better.”
Putnam has also found that ethnic and racial diversity is associated with lower social capital in the US. The more diverse an area is, the less trusting people are. As Putnam has written:
people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down,’ that is, to pull in like a turtle… [They tend to] withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.
Richwine brings together scattered research findings proving that IQ and the capacity to build social capital are related. He refers to the Kohlbergian tradition of research in moral development that finds that high IQ people are more likely to reason about moral issues in a principled manner. I have written extensively about this relationship here.
Richwine also summarizes research proving that brighter people tend to be more altruistic than duller ones. Accordingly, brighter people are better able to build networks of trust and cooperation. Finally, Richwine brings in the well-known findings from The Bell Curve that bright people not only have higher educational achievement than dull ones, but are more likely to “avoid jail, stay married to a first spouse, maintain employment, and wait until marriage to have children.”
The relationship that Richwine demonstrates between intelligence and social capital casts familiar facts in a new light. Presumably, most of us are familiar with Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen’s finding in IQ and the Wealth of Nations that the average IQ of a nation is a very strong predictor of its wealth. The authors explain the relationship in terms of the economic benefits that intelligence itself brings, such as greater capacity for skilled labor. However, the economic success of high IQ nations may be just as much, if not more, owing to capacity for social capital. That is, it may be that high-IQ nations do better not merely because their inhabitants can learn more quickly, but because they are better able to form economically beneficial networks of trust and cooperation.
Richwine suggests that the link between IQ and social capital ought to inform our immigration policy: the negative effects of diversity on trust would be mitigated by restricting entry to high-IQ immigrants. Richwine is certainly not a pro-white thinker: he does not regard diversity as negative in itself… or perhaps we are too quick to make assumptions. After all, if Richwine did think diversity was inherently harmful, would he dare to say that in articles meant for National Review and Forbes? In his article on social capital, Richwine writes, “I am going to assume that some amount of immigrant diversity is valuable or inevitable, or both.” Diversity may not be valuable, it may just be inevitable—scarcely a ringing endorsement!
It is probably fortunate that Richwine does not engage in blatant racial advocacy, as doing so would likely kill his chances of being published in “respectable” magazines. Let’s just be glad that someone with high-powered educational credentials is getting this information out there and taking IQ research in a new direction.
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Revisionary,
I don’t disagree with what you say in general. However, I don’t think it’s legitimate to assume “tribes are tribes” and leave it at that. If that were the case, how would the various nationalities of European immigrants to the US have managed to assimilate into one nation, as they clearly have? It’s more likely that bright Chinese immigrants will assimilate into our society, or at least into the best part of it, than dull Mexican ones—of course, the latter assimilate into the American lower and under-classes, but that’s not the kind of assimilation that we want. Your point about our not needing non-white immigration is quite correct. However, if the government is going to insist on mass immigration, Richwine’s sort is much superior to the current family-reunification system we have in place.
What I principally value in Richwine’s articles is his concrete discoveries about intelligence and its relation to other personality traits, not his policy recommendations. Also, I value the fact that he’s making a case for the relevance of intelligence in “respectable” publications. Who other than Charles Murray and John Derbyshire is doing that now?
I doubt that someone who is getting published in National Review and Forbes is going to publish anything on White America or even in the more widely read race realist websites and magazines, especially because Richwine hasn’t established himself professionally yet. If he thinks he can publish productive, useful work within the confines of respectable publications, then I think he should go on doing that for quite a while longer rather than courting controversy. Hopefully, Richwine can attain a position of real influence rather than ending up as one more marginal racial right writer.
For one thing, various European communities integrated reasonably successfully into American culture because they were Europeans. They were more like than unlike Americans of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic backgrounds. The “different” Europeans — Poles, Czechs, Italians, etc. — were a relatively small number compared with the whole population.
Numbers are really the key. A handful of immigrants of any nationality practically has to assimilate. A significant number of them, in contrast, forms a colony. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are hostile to the rest of the country, just that they are first and last loyal to their own nation within a nation. It’s called balkanization.
Getting back to Richwine, maybe there is some value in raising the issue of intelligence in a magazine of the “right liberal” establishment. Possibly he even took a risk in submitting his article, and if so, I salute him. But I remain firmly opposed to arguments along the lines of “mass immigration is good if … .” The open borders crowd and reconquistas will seize on the first part of the proposition, while reducing the qualification to some minor or purely legalistic consideration. Pro-immigration activists are determined and ruthless. This is not the time to be offering them “compromises” that will give them what they want just for the sake of making an abstract and politically meaningless point about intelligence.
The fact that Indian immigrants have a high IQ average, could be linked to the fact that such people come from the higher castes of India, not from the lower castes.
But then, if they are so bright, let them enjoy great carreers in their home country, and let’s keep America White!
I say lets restore red America and boot the whites out.
The one and only genuine American.
Well, Navajo, the aborigines* on the North American continent had an open borders immigration policy, and look what happened to them. They also didn’t have private property, i.e., nobody owned the North American continent in 1492.
*I refuse to call them “Native Americans” since “native” means one was born here. I was born here, ergo I am technically a native American.
An issue that is not addressed concerning high IQ minority immigrants,and the negative impact on the European Nations,is the children of these immigrants.
It has been learned that the children of the upper end of the Bell Curve revert back to what is known as “regression to the mean”. In short, the IQ of the children from any racial group will revert back to the “mean” IQ of that group. Extremely bright people will have children less bright than they are, while extremely dull people will have children less dull than they are.
Since Indian IQ’s average 81, the children of the upper IQ Indians will trend downward due to inherent genetics of the race. This explains why the second generation of a successful family frequently loses the socioeconomic advantage of their parents. This is nature’s way of preventing generations of geniuses from exceeding to IQ infinity, and also prevents the downward trend to a class of mentally retarded societies.
As more and more low IQ immigrants come to our country and have children, what future lies ahead for our once great nations?
Hello, I am rec1man and I have often posted on steve sailers blog
Jason Richwine quoted the Princeton 2003 New Immigrant children IQ survey
This survey was done on the children of immigrants from various countries The IQ of these children has already regressed to the mean
Indian children in the USA after regression to the mean are at 112 IQ
In a long post I made on isteve Indian IQ is Octomodal ( 8 bell curves ) Each of these bell curves is caste dependent and region dependent
Indian immigrants to USA, in general avoid most of the low IQ castes such as muslims, untouchables and primitive forest tribals who form 40% of the Indian population and these castes do have an IQ in the 80 range
and the higher 60% castes , consists of 40% of peasants who score in the blue collar white range and 20% of merchants and brahmins who score very near the jewish range
The world men chess champion is Vish Anand ( brahmin ) and the world women #2 is Humpy Koneru ( merchant )
The tendency to create a spread sheet indexable field through IQ is a very American ideal. Seriously do you all hold bachelor’s degrees in Marketing? Because this all reeks of frat boy pedantic instead of genuine intellectual research (in which case you would all be the Quislings of your proposed bleached sweepstakes).
Not here to pick fights, but more to get some qualifiers. Because I want to hear non-flim flam argument with academic empirical research that reads better than the liberal views as to why tinted people are, as you say, failures.
I’d be totally on board with this (once again) lazy attempt at “scientific” explanation except that it is a common fact amongst educators that IQ is not fixed, rendering any comment on the subject matter obsolete before it even hits paper. Additionally, the kernals in the testing methods and test development were written by a Frenchman interested in explaining median tendencies of test performances and not who’s smarter. There is no cut and bleed standardized method for testing for intelligence besides a zombie apocalypse when the bell tolls for thee. Then you’ll really have to get creative.
This think tank is frankly behind the times operating more like the Comintern than the ISI! Shame! Clark and Sverdsen’s research attests to the fact that IQ can change as a result of changes in family environment. Others have also shown this like Kohn and Flynn who have carried these factors over to work and historical environment. Reasoning, thus can be developed.
Sadly, I have met a plethora of self-professed high IQ geniuses who are virtually incompetent at many life functions and/or conducting their day to day affairs. Be it through insanity, lack of rudimentary skills, and lack of ability to enjoy a simple meal, these professed geniuses are really archetypes of a fallible assessment of worth. IQ’s mean nothing as determinants, only indicators (like genetics).
The emphasis on moral reasoning would indicate that you really want to secure this point as the lynchpin of your white American ideology. How Germanic of you!
My professional recommendation will be received very leukwarmly (sic):
If you want to live longer, raise your IQ however you must, lest you be condemned to a more immediate death (says the research). (Or be damned to pursue a degree in liberal arts or psychology).
Ten Questions and fourteen words
- What if Jews are (and always were) the root of all white societies’ problems?
- What if the Jews are not (and never were) the root of all white societies’ problems?
- What if whites are not universally or significantly more intelligent (excluding Asians) than other races?
- What if whites are universally and significantly more intelligent (excluding Asians) than other races?
- What if the Conservatives are not (and will never be) aware of the real nature of the white races struggle?
- What if the Conservatives are not aware of the real nature of the white races struggle but will learn and eventually be helpful to that struggle?
What if the enemies of white race (as they continue to out reproduce us) gain size, political strength, boldness, and economic gain through our government’s policy of discrimination and exclusion of whites?
With five more years of the same will we have a chance in hell to survive as a race?
- Do you think in those five year whites will stop arguing among themselves about the first six questions and take steps to improve the situation for all whites before it’s too late?
- What do those first six questions have to do with the fourteen words?
David Logsdon
I can’t believe those of you who make excuses for those who test at a lower IQ. Maybe in the “exception” category would be those who cannot understand the kings english, but come on, what country do we exist in? I for one favor the identity we have had in this country which we are losing every day, furthering it’s demise . If those of you who argue that diversity is this country’s greatest strength look to who is dragging this country down, both in terms of financially (welfare and entitlement) and mentally (same), you will see it is the minorities who are too stupid to use birth control or care, increasing in multitudes, and will one day turn this country into nothing more than one big African or Mexican nation. And then you can really enjoy your friggin diversity. Fat Mexicans and blacks, oh yeah, we all want to live there.
I believe Asian immigration (regardless of IQ) is undesirable. As stated above, we can find plenty of bright people in our 300-million population. Additionally, third-world immigrants and their children are changing the nature of the medical profession, and even entering the legal profession in large numbers.I don’t care how smart they are; their cultural outlook is and always will be different from the way it was when I was a child.
Africa, Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East need their own bright people to bring their nations into the 21st Century. I don’t want them here.
Nothing coming out of the AEI can be good for white people. The AEI is a neoconservative outfit and the neoconservatives are the people who are responsible for driving anyone with a sense of racial loyalty out of the Republican party and out the conservative movement. They actually brag about doing this too.
Wealthy Chinese immigrants in California have formed their own enclaves and are not assimilating at all. How can anyone who claims to be pro-white support Chinese immigration?
Richwine’s article in The American is generally okay, although it is no great comfort to discover that the magazine of a country club–Republican, business-oriented conservative magazine permits a writer to argue that more-intelligent immigrants are better for the country than less-intelligent immigrants. Big flipping deal.
Two of his ideas rub me the wrong way, though.
” … immigrants with advanced degrees and sought-after talents are usually quite intelligent.” I guess Dr. Richwine has never heard of diploma mills or tried to read illiterate papers by people with Ph.D.s after their names. His idea that advanced degrees are a sign of superior neural activity may be true in some fields, but they do not necessarily correlate with general intelligence. A lot of higher degrees are just an emblem of vocational training, signifying the ability to remember abstruse information or manipulate data.
As for “sought-after talents,” that sounds reasonable on the surface, but how many kinds of talent are lacking in a nation of 300 million people? It may be that our educational system doesn’t encourage certain kinds of talent — our obsession with college degrees means we don’t have enough skilled crafts workers, for instance — but that is a different issue.
“More intelligent (or educated) immigrants would be more productive workers, and they would also have a much less objectionable social impact on the United States due to their enhanced ability to cooperate.”
Beyond a certain percentage of the population, no immigrant group however brainy has a favorable social impact on the pre-existing society. If we allow 50 million Chinese or Indians with guaranteed, U.S.-inspected prime IQs of 130 to immigrate, they might cooperate well within their own ethnic groups. That doesn’t mean they will interact smoothly with the native population. Tribes are tribes. Colonists will make colonies. Adding 50 million Chinese will simply mean the United States becomes 14 percent Chinese (plus whatever percentage it was Chinese already).
Anyhow, you have only to look at what big business has already encouraged in the way of immigration to understand that the number of Mr. Wizards it wants is minuscule. The “talent” our corporate masters most desire is the ability to perform menial, repetitive jobs at minimum wage. The “talent” the government craves above all is social neediness to provide new clients for nanny state “caregivers.”
All else being equal, it is probably better to have smarter immigrants. But accepting that principle is ultimately self-defeating for immigration restrictionists: it acknowledges that immigration is good, and all that matters is that immigrants pass some kind of test, one that is likely to be decided on political grounds.
In his heart of hearts Dr. Richwine might have stronger views than he feels he dare express in a “right-liberal” magazine. Why don’t you invite him to submit an article for White America? Then we’ll see what he’s made of.