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This report uses recent economic modelling to relate cognitive skills – as measured by PISA and other international instruments – to economic growth. This relationship indicates that relatively small improvements in the skills of a nation’s labour force can have very large impacts on future well-being. Moreover, the gains, put in terms of current GDP, far outstrip today’s value of the short-run business-cycle management. This is not to say that efforts should not be directed at issues of economic recession, but it is to say that the long-run issues should not be neglected.
A modest goal of having all OECD countries boost their average PISA scores by 25 points over the next 20 years – which is less than the most rapidly improving education system in the OECD, Poland, achieved between 2000 and 2006 alone – implies an aggregate gain of OECD GDP of USD 115 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010 (as evaluated at the start of reform in terms of real present value of future improvements in GDP) (Figure 1).
A number of years ago, I suggested that the American Establishment drop its obsession with Closing the Gap -- in effect, boosting black and Hispanic scores by close to a standard deviation while not allowing whites and Asians to improve -- in favor of a fairer and far more feasible goal of improving all groups by an average of a half standard deviation. Hanushek looks at just boosting everybody by a quarter of a standard deviation on test scores (25 points on a PISA test or on a SAT test) and finds the net present value for the U.S. would be $20 trillion.
Bringing all countries up to the average performance of Finland, OECD’s best performing education system in PISA, would result in gains in the order of USD 260 trillion (Figure 4). The report also shows that it is the quality of learning outcomes, not the length of schooling, which makes the difference.
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Yeah, but show this to the people in charge today, and they will just triple down on closing the gap; with the justification that if we not only close the gap, but swing the non-performers above today's performers, we will have USD 260 trillion extra.
I suspect that such a change really requires genetic engineering or good old fashion eugenic breeding.
Yeah, but a smarter population might chase even wackier phantoms than we do now. Was it Orwell who ssid some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual could believe them?
If six extra IQ points means Cultural Revolution, you can keep them, thank you.
The only way we'd have 260 trillion to burn on such a thing is if it were already accomplished.
These sorts of calculations exaggerate the benefits of higher test scores. A lot of the advantage in worker productivity comes from the fact that the worker is smart enough to score that high. It isn't the knowledge. It is the underlying ability which the test measures.
Parker is right, the PISA scores track IQ, it's the ability more than the knowledge that is driving the effect.
There are probably some minor gains which can be rung out of the system by increasing discipline, ensuring nutritional adequacy and disarming juvenile thugs; stringent immigration controls would also be mandatory. But Anonymous 2:35 hit the nail on the head: "I suspect that such a change really requires genetic engineering or good old fashion eugenic breeding".
In fact, the genetic engineering should start with the educational bureaucrats and the leftoid political juntas which have now slimed their way to the top of most Western countries.
Anon.
Ok, Steve, you're definitely earned the right to say 'I told you so' as the official data is suggesting.
The question has been, what is to be done? How can a it be implemented? How can US improve everyone by a half or a quarter deviation?
And do we have a government (no doubt aware of the same conclusions that these international tests are showing) that is willing to implement any of these things?
Guess the answer....is staring us all in the face.
This relationship indicates that relatively small improvements in the skills of a nation’s labour force can have very large impacts on future well-being.
Isn't it reasonable to infer that relatively small decreases in the skills of a nation’s labour force can have very large impacts on future well-being as well, is it?
"The question has been, what is to be done?"
First step: Stop obsessing over Closing the Gap: improving black scores without improving white scores. It's much more plausible that we can come up with a lot of small reforms that will benefit the country on the whole.
Steve, America will NEVER stop obsessing over closing the Gap until we get rid of our very own Albigensian Heresy.
No doubt you've read Derb's piece on White self-loathing and his explanation (not "the Jews" or Christianity but the Enlightenment). I'd disagree. I'd say it is definitely Christianity, or rather a post-Christian Gnostic/Cathar heresy. I know you are at least considering the Deep State theory, but consider for a moment (let me corrupt you please!) the Deep Culture theory. That cultural patterns among White re-occur at various times because natural/sexual selection among higher IQ people with chaotic political structures in hostile environments create obsessions with Abstract concepts and rejection of the material world.
If Gnosticism borrowed from Plato in rejection of the material world and the Albigensians thought the material world was actively evil, why not a post-Christian view that Whiteness is overtly evil? That fits nicely with Derb's quote of the Harvard Professor Ignatiev and the concurrent plague of beta maleness (or rather beta maleness being perfectly adapted to when women were slightly unequal and beneath men and inherently maladaptive to today's Grrrrl! Power).
We live in the MOST religious times. Its just that the elites and many who aspire to elite status have deep Albigensian/Cathar views and we lack our own Pope Innocent.
... Hanushek looks at just boosting everybody by a quarter of a standard deviation on test scores (25 points on a PISA test or on a SAT test) and finds the net present value for the U.S. would be $20 trillion.
I doubt that very much. School has two purposes, to rank the students in terms of academic ability and to teach everyone certain basic skills needed to function as an adult.
Ranking is generally done through courses like plane geometry which are of little practical value. Raising everyone's scores by the same amount in these courses doesn't accomplish anything, you are ranking the students in the exact same order as before and you aren't teaching them anything useful.
Teaching practical courses like driver's education better would have some payoff but I really doubt that's what we are talking about.
Suppose every American had an IQ of 150 or above.
Would it necessarily mean a bigger economy or just stiffer competition for elite positions?
I mean some people will still have to wait tables, pick up the garbage, work as plumbers, work as check out clerks, and etc.
There's no way everyone's gonna be Bill Gates and Steve Jobs EVEN IF they had the natural talent to be such.
This is why, in the BRAVE NEW WORLD, some people are made to be dumb and docile, happy with their simple servile lot. Smart people with 'dumb roles in life' go nuts and make trouble.
It's a fallacy to think, 'because very intelligent people are at the top, if everyone was made intelligent, they would all be at the top'. No, in any society, there are only so many slots for the elite positions. There can be only so many googles. Suppose we have a million other people who are as smart as Brin and the other guy. Would that mean a million googles? Or would there be stiffer competition among search engines, with a few winning while others lose out? Will there be just one big winner?
So, even though MORE SMART PEOPLE means more talent and more ideas, the law of diminishing return sets in as no society can make every smart person work in a smart profession because SOMEONE HAS TO COOK, WAIT TABLES, AND PICK UP THE GARBAGE. If a society were made up entirely of Einsteins, will every Einstein be able to work as an Einstein? But then, who fixes the plumbing, sells the fruits, picks the tomatoes, and etc?
With where our society is going--more technology and more robotics--, there is less need for average and dumb people to do menial jobs. So, it would be better to have more smart people and fewer dumber people, but even in a society of mostly smart people, there's only so many good jobs to go around.
And what happens to smart people who get stuck with crummy jobs? Would they be content like Mexican illegals who are glad even to just pick tomatoes? Or, will they grow angry and resentful and cause more trouble for society?
or, will they intelligently work together with the successful smarties to come up with something like a social-democratic system where things are shared more equally, the bargain being the have-less smarties will not make trouble for the have-more smarties and will lead responsible lives instead of acting like black welfare queens.
I get the feeling the pharmaceutical industry's only just scraped the surface of nootropic possibility. The correlation between brain size and IQ isn't *that* strong, there might be other leavers in the brain we could tweak to get higher performance. As Greg Chochran has been saying, if we could understand how some of these genetic disease-causing alleles boost IQ in single-copy form, we might mimic the mechanism with a pill.
I think most people could add 5 or 10 points to their phenotypic IQ by simply following Dave Asprey and Paul Jaminet's advice (though I guess the high IQ are way more likely to stick to said advice). That alone should be worth a few hundred billion.
Class is social than biological, but maybe it's time we spoke of 'natural classes'.
For example, the 'natural middle class' people would be people who, if given the opportunity, could rise to middle class status in a modern society. Such people might be poor in a backward nation, in a corrupt and tyrannical nation, in a communist nation. But in a free, technologically advanced, and rule-of-law society like the US, they could, through combination of effort and talent, rise to middle class status.
Long ago, almost all people were poor; even most smart people were poor as they had to work all day on farms just to make enough food to eat. But with rise of modern industry and whole new opportunities for social climbing, there was an expansion of the middle class.
Thus, lots of formerly poor people became middle class people. Most Jews arrived poor in America but worked up to middle class status.
Because so many people of poor class made it to middle class, people came to define class only in social terms instead of linking it to biology.
And yet, even in a society where nearly everyone is poor--today's North Korea would be a good example--, there's gonna be 'natural middle class' people who, if given the chance, could rise to middle class status in a modern market economy with property laws. But there are also gonna be 'natural underclass' people who, due to natural low IQ and other issues, won't rise to middle class even when opportunities are availed to them. Thus, there is a link between biology and class. I mean our common sense would tell us so. But because of the habit of seeing class only in social terms, there's this notion that all poor and underclass people can become middle class with just the right kinds of social ideas. We have such ideas from the socialist left and from the libertarian right. Both assume that most people are equal in ability, and equality of achievement can be acquired through more spending or more liberty. Libertarians say more liberty can save Detroit.
But in fact, the 'natural underclass' folks are NOT going to make it to the middle class. It's just not within them to do so.
It's like a 'naturally middle class' person will never make it to the upper class(unless he wins the lottery or marries a super rich person). Suppose a 'naturally middle class' person has an IQ of about 120. He's smart enough to do well but not smart enough to do really well. So, he will have to remain in the middle class and give up dreams of becoming a Bill Gates or Sergey Brin. And we see this as accepting reality for what it is. Indeed, we would find it foolish to discuss the idea of closing the gap between a 'naturally middle class' person with a 'naturally upper class' person. Brin and Gates, with very high IQs and ability, are 'naturally upper class'. Even if they were eking by in the gulag with rags on their backs, they would still be 'naturally upperclass'. Such people, if given the freedom and chance(and protection of rule of law), will likely make it to the upper class.
But we know that people with IQ of 120 and modest talent will never reach so high. Indeed, we tell such people to accept their lot as middle class folks instead of dreaming of making it big. It'd be foolish for them to be so unrealistic.
And yet, we have this notion that naturally underclass people(with natural IQs of 85) can all make it to the middle class. We don't believe that the gap could be closed between the naturally upper class people like Brin/Gates and the naturally middle class folks(like most of us), but somehow, we keep believing that the gap can be closed between the naturally middle class and naturally underclass.
It's about time we admitted the link between class and biology. Class is a social reality but shaped largely by natural talents and not just social training of education.
First step: Stop obsessing over Closing the Gap: improving black scores without improving white scores. It's much more plausible that we can come up with a lot of small reforms that will benefit the country on the whole.
While the usual suspects will continue to obsess over the gap as a way of guilt tripping whites, surely you are aware that if selection for higher IQ (better scores on those tests) is not occurring and dysgenic demographic changes are occurring, then life will not get better for most of us.
Moreover, training to the test will not help improve the lot of those living in the US either.
"...until we get rid of our very own Albigensian Heresy... Cathar heresy... many who aspire to elite status have deep Albigensian/Cathar views..."
I larned me some history and read about the Languedoc and the Albigensian Crusade. The Inquisition was founded to deal with the Cathar heresy. Though in the south of France, because Norman power reached from Scotland to southern France, the crusade is more connected to British history than one might at first think (and to formation of the French nation). The crusade, around 1210, is where "kill them all, let god sort them out" comes from. "Tuez les tous, Dieu reconnaitra les siens" - "Kill them all, God will recognize his own". Some things go back a long way.
There have been a number of books that posit that forms of Gnosticism similar to Catharism have been associated with the West and Catholicism from the beginning, maybe forever, and that the 60s (perhaps leading to our latest elites) is just the last period when Gnostic thought has come to the fore. After all, if everything is all in the mind, and the material world is something evil created by an evil alien mind, make believe rules. And do what thou whilst.
Makes about as much sense as many theories about why the modern world seems ruled by dingbats weakly rooted in reality and why modern whites often seem unconcerned about worldly survivial. After all, if you are a Cathar Perfect such things are beneath you. (One of the nice things about Gnosticism is it's not formal and you don't have to know anything about what a Cathar Perfect is; it's the sort of thing that smart teenagers are always re-inventing.)
Rejection of the body and the material world (the creation and centralization of the ascent experience) took form not only in capital-R religion but also, during the Enlightenment era, in Cartesian dualism, a novelty or modern folly that is more or less a straight road to madness and nihilism, as is transpiring from a study of the grand arc of the past four centuries. But madness and nihilism take an irreducible multiplicity of forms (naturally enough), of which anti-whiteness may be one but not the only one or even a necessary one. Hitler, for example, was among other things a shaman - appealing to his Volk from a deeply heretical religious place, and he isn't commonly described as anti-white.
The Enlightenment is of a piece with religion/heresy. (John Gray, in his fuzzily expressed way, echoes earlier thinkers on this.) The concept of Progress is secularized eschatology, for example. Marxism is an especially clear (apocalyptic) instance of this, as Paul Johnson pointed out in his book "Intellectuals"; and Fukuyama's "The End of History" is another instance.
It's impossible to predict which way religious/heresy in general will swing, really. The practice of the Catholic Church for many centuries wasn't notably anti-white, and I already discussed Hitler. I think we can dismiss explanations of anti-whiteness that blame religion or nominal secularism. It is probably more a case of ethnic power struggles playing out in a world generally racked by religion and heresy (as it has been for five hundred centuries), struggles only occasionally or accidentally facilitated by these forces.
From Whiskey’s comment we see that the Jewish meme of ‘blaming the victim‘ is another case of jewish projection.
"A number of years ago, I suggested that the American Establishment drop its obsession with Closing the Gap -- in effect, boosting black and Hispanic scores by close to a standard deviation while not allowing whites and Asians to improve -- in favor of a fairer and far more feasible goal of improving all groups by an average of a half standard deviation."
-The blatant focus on miscegenation is a tacit acknowledgement by the liberal establishment that it is basically a hopeless idea that the brown underclass can pull itself up by its bootstraps to the same performance as whites if only given the opportunity to do so.
'The report also shows that it is the quality of learning outcomes, not the length of schooling, which makes the difference.'
And it's the quality of learning incomes that makes the difference to learning outcomes. I believe the US is going backwards in that regard, but I'm sure if they can just find the right way to measure the pig the pig will weigh more.
You're right that in any society, there are going to be more Indians than chiefs, but a country with a higher average IQ has the potential to be wealthier, so it's Indians live better lives. Better to be a factory worker at an Electrolux plant in Sweden than at a Tata Steel in India.
Turning that argument on its head, Steve.
In a modern hi-tech, high-productivity, capital, (as opposed to labor), intensive economy that relies on the development of newer and better technologies to up incremental GDP growth - something which is a difficult task due to the law of diminishing returns, but is necessary nevertheless if stagnation is not set in - then the only way to achieve this is by research and development at the sharpest cutting edge of science. Crucially, this is dependent on selecting the intellectually gifted and nuturing them. Therefore, in order to icrase living standards for *all* citizens, advanced nations would be best advised to concentrate educational resources upon those who would benefit most from it - and not the laggards.
In what appears a paradox this paper, which shows what causes growth (answer - economic freedom is the necessary and possibly sufficient condition) finds no significant correlation between growth and education spending, with the single exception of adult males (ie guys doing evening classes).
www.sevenfund.org/pdf/HabitsofHighlyEffectiveCountries.pdf
The answer may well be that there is a very poor correlation between the amount spent on education and actual achievement.
"And what happens to smart people who get stuck with crummy jobs?"
Two hundred years ago, 90% of the population were farmers. The other 10% weren't all lawyers and doctors either; there were a good number of household servants and the like. So there would have been plenty of high-IQ people herding cattle and doing other such "crummy jobs."
I think people in the past were more likely to do work because it needed to be done to put food on the table, and get their intellectual stimulation somewhere else. The idea that your work must be interesting is a pretty new concept, and historically would have been true for very few.
I'm a high-IQ guy who enjoyed some of the menial jobs I've had in the past, partly because they gave me time to think about other things. In a cubicle at a keyboard, you can't think about much except the busywork at hand; but when you're mucking out horse stalls, you can think about philosophy, the sermon your pastor gave last Sunday, the date you're planning for next weekend, or whatever else crosses your mind.
The problem with menial jobs today isn't that they're boring, but that they don't pay well enough, thanks primarily to mass immigration. Pay $25/hour for field labor (which might raise your grocery bill 5%), and plenty of smart people will take that job -- and spend their free time pursuing the interesting ideas that they thought about during work.
"Would it necessarily mean a bigger economy or just stiffer competition for elite positions?" - it wouldn't mean the bigger economy. For one thing, where are all the extra million barrels of oil going to come from? civilization needs energy period, among other things.
The "more education" meme exists to misdirect everyone away from what is really happening to the economy.
No doubt you've read Derb's piece on White self-loathing and his explanation (not "the Jews" or Christianity but the Enlightenment).
As if the Jews, Christianity, and the Enlightenment weren't all thoroughly intertwined.
http://forward.com/articles/9338/the-featherman-file-/
In the sixties when I, as an undergraduate, took a course on international development, no one expected South Korea to be one of the winners. Korea was prostrate after the war. It was cold, mountainous and without much in the way of resources. Yet today New "S"(Samsung) dominates Old "S"(Sony).
Who'd a thunk it?
In the modern world it seems the only natural resource that matter is human cognitive capacity. You also need an appropriate government of course, but without a brainy population you'd better have a lot of 'sweet light crude' under your soil.
The Lynn-Vanhanen studies are likely to be the biggest revolution in science since Darwin. The message is so simple: brains equals money. That's the theory. Everything else is just a corollary.
The problem with the thesis you offer here - besides your probable insincerity - is that spending more on education has never, in the past, been much of a strategy in terms of results. Why should it suddenly turn efficacious?
Also the tempo has increased. IQ and inherent mental capacity has become more important lately. Tempus continues to fugit.
Everyone today, except me, seems to carry a 'smart phone'. Given Moore's Law it isn't long now before the phone in you pocket is smarter than you are. However long that is, it will happen first for black Africans and last for the Chinese. There is no conceivable environmental (educational) reform that can be instituted now to 'save' blacks. If there is a genetic 'fix', it will have to come soon.
Albertosaurus
"I suspect that such a change really requires genetic engineering or good old fashion eugenic breeding."
Or good old fashion discipline.
Let´s start with killing all the lawyers. (Shakespeare)
Building up your average human capital is the way to prosperity.
Dragging it down is the path to poverty.
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"I suspect that such a change really requires genetic engineering or good old fashion eugenic breeding".
Average age of puberty.
Part of eugenic breeding would simply mean removing the fast breeder advantage.
(At least in cold climates.)
"Therefore, in order to icrase living standards for *all* citizens, advanced nations would be best advised to concentrate educational resources upon those who would benefit most from it - and not the laggards."
An army with bright officers and bright other ranks can take on vastly larger numbers of an army with bright officer and dumb other ranks.
For, "All for want of a horse..." type reasons.
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"The answer may well be that there is a very poor correlation between the amount spent on education and actual achievement."
iSteve's PISA posts seem to suggest that may be wrong though. Taking US expenditure and US *average* educational outcomes implies that conclusion but taking each ethnic cohort separately and comparing them to their ancestral population seemed to suggest (unless i misread it) that the US system increased the results of all the lower scoring groups above their ancestral population (but not the higher scoring groups).
(Which is not surprising as the US public system doesn't even attempt to stretch the bright kids as it would make the gap worse.)
If PISA is g-loaded, then how are we going to be able to raise median scores by 0.5 sigma, 0.25 sigma or any statistically significant sigma without the solution that invokes shrieks of horror in polite society, "nazihitlergaschambersholocaustsixmillionjews"
I.E. Eugenics.
I don't think Steve is proposing to make anyone smarter, but rather to teach them to do more with what they have. Right now, we aren't. We're teaching too much to the lower half of the ability spectrum in the wrong way.
I love how they talk about bringing other countries up to Finland's level. How? By replacing Haiti's entire population with Finns?
Another howler is that raising the scores 25 points is a 'modest goal'. We're pouring Somalis and Guatemalans into the USA as fast as we can, and we expect our scores to _rise_?
I'm a high-IQ guy who enjoyed some of the menial jobs I've had in the past, partly because they gave me time to think about other things.
Seymour Cray, famous leading designer of many early supercomputers, was known for thinking through problems while digging a tunnel to nowhere from his basement:
"While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem."
"In the sixties when I, as an undergraduate, took a course on international development, no one expected South Korea to be one of the winners."
It would be interesting to somehow compensate in these rankings for decades of sustained US military "front-line" spending. South Korea, Japan, and Thailand have all been unique in this regard.
(I once read somewhere that one third of the Japanese economy during the Korean War was derived from the war. Can that be right?)
I'm a high-IQ guy who enjoyed some of the menial jobs I've had in the past, partly because they gave me time to think about other things. In a cubicle at a keyboard, you can't think about much except the busywork at hand; but when you're mucking out horse stalls, you can think about philosophy, the sermon your pastor gave last Sunday, the date you're planning for next weekend, or whatever else crosses your mind.
The problem with menial jobs today isn't that they're boring, but that they don't pay well enough....
I couldn't agree more.
Prof. Hanushek is the biggest name in education economics. Unfortunately for the new 20 trillion dollar opportunity, he's well known for saying that spending more money on education doesn't seem to affect performance at all.
"Smart enough to score that high" and conscientious enough to care about scoring high (on a test he has no stake in). Education used to make an effort at things like conscientiousness, discipline, character, citizenship (yikes). Now it's taboo in public schools. You can still get it at some parochials and privates (and bootcamp)
"Why not talk of closing the gap between rich whites and poor whites?"
That's right. I went to an all white school (with academic and vocational tracking) in the county seat of a rural area. Nobody ever worried about the trailer park kids "catching up" to the college prep kids.
Whenever you hear the term Closing the Gap, it's plain & simple race baiting.
And menial job labor is now micromanaged. Thank MBAs for that.
Great article and great comments.
Even Steve here did not mention IQ as the main issue. I read PISA discussions everywhere and the word "IQ" appears almost nowhere.
Did they really check CORRELATIONS or causation of PISA score results??
Is there any proof that increasing PISA scores will increase economical success?
Or only that countries with high PISA scores tend to have high economic success?
Maybe increasing PISA scores through training will not greatly increase workforce productivity?
Or only for the basic literacy!? If you workers can not read well and figure out a 15% tip, then of course we don't get far.
To those that think we need a bunch of stupid people to do menial tasks: I have not seen Finland or Korea, but I can say that German plumbers, store vendors know what they are doing.
In comparison. in countries like Brazil, and you better watch the painter and the electrician's work to make sure they don't screw up.
It is not clear how much is due to IQ differences (a German drugstore sales girl is probably as intelligent as a Brazilian
bank teller, if not a bank manager). Or how much is due to the great special education for menial and manual jobs.
Thilo Sarrazin, a famous German anti PC person, wrote in his book, that the states with the lowest school scored spend considerably more per capita then the states with the highest school scores.
Similarly, I read that the poorest white Appalachian schools outscore the richest Black schools that have abundant funding.
All these false political decisions are due to the IQ taboo: it must not be said that, at 6 or 8 years of age, some people just don't have what is needed (IQ, hard work) to work in a complex profession, to study at a good University, ....
After all, this is racism, patriarchy, elitism ........
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