The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One - Satoshi Kanazawa 2012

IQ and the Values of Nations
Why Liberals Are More Intelligent than Conservatives

The Intelligence Paradox about the effect of general intelligence on individual preferences and values may also have implications for national differences in their characters, institutions, and laws. Just like individuals, nations also vary in their collective preferences and values. Individual preferences and values of millions of people can aggregate to shape national institutions and laws at the societal level.

If more intelligent individuals are more likely to be liberal, as the data both in the United States and the United Kingdom seem to suggest, then it logically follows that, at the societal level, populations with higher average intelligence are more likely to be liberal. Data indeed do confirm this macrolevel implication of the Intelligence Paradox.

Even after statistically controlling for such relevant factors as economic development, education, history of communism, geographic location, and the size of the government, societies with higher average intelligence are more liberal.²¹ The average intelligence in society increases the highest marginal tax rate (as an expression of people's willingness to contribute their private resources for the welfare of genetically unrelated others) and, partly as a result, decreases income inequality. The more intelligent the population, the more they pay in income taxes and the more egalitarian their income distribution.

In fact, the average intelligence of the population is the strongest determinant of the highest marginal tax rate and the level of income inequality in the society. Each IQ point in average intelligence increases the highest marginal income tax rate by more than half a point; in societies with higher average intelligence by 10 IQ points, individuals pay more than 5% more of their individual incomes in taxes.

It appears that the Intelligence Paradox can not only explain individual differences in their preferences and values, but also national differences in their characters, institutions, and laws, in other words, the values of nations.

Notes

1. Murray (1998)

2. Kanazawa (2010a)

3. Hamilton (1964)

4. Trivers (1971)

5. Whitmeyer (1997)

6. Whitmeyer (1997)

7. Dunbar (1992)

8. Levinson (1991—1995)

9. Chagnon (1992); Cronk (2004); Hill and Hurtado (1996); Lee (1979); Whitten (1976)

10. Ridley (1996)

[11]. See Note 19, Chapter , above

12. Kanazawa (2010a)

13. Lake and Breglio (1992); Shapiro and Mahajan (1986); Wirls (1986)

14. Kluegel and Smith (1989); Sundquist (1983)

15. Deary, Batty, and Gale (2008)

16. Charlton (2009)

17. Miller and Kanazawa (2007, pp. 38—40)

18. Gallup (1990)

19. Zahavi (1975); Zahavi and Zahavi (1997)

20. Barkow (2006)

21. Kanazawa (2009)