Better is to predict many external outcomes and average across them to find the best set of estimates. This is best on the assumption that maximizing reliability and construct validity will maximizing predictive validity. I suggest you download the SPI and use the indicators as your outcomes. Average across them (remember to use absolute values, or reverse by the S factor loading), and see which set does the best. https://www.socialprogress.org/
Or instead of averaging, make a model that predicts outcomes from some cases where you are really quite sure of the correct answer. Ideally Lasso regression IMO.
There's also the issue of selective migration. Personally, I doubt the genotypic IQ of natives in those countries is much lower than those of NW Europeans.
In fact according to this Kenya scores higher than India a non African country. I am curious on why you think that is and why india has lower iq than other Asian countries
They are less affluent, and we lack recent data, as no study has analyzed 1.4 million genomes from Indian-specific populations for cognitive architecture.
About half of "israel's" jewish population is mizrahi jews and a growing segment of the ashkenazi jews are the highly inbred ultra-orthodox jews. The secular, well-educated ashkenazi with somewhat western values are increasingly a rare breed.
Additionally, Mizrahim have among the highest attrition rates. Only 66% took the exam, compared with 71% of Muslims, 80% of Ashkenazim, and 85% of Christians. That's bound to deflate the Christian Arab IQ and inflate the Mizrahi IQ, assuming that data is correct all else being equal.
Income on Wikipedia, you can google for cheating scandal stuffs.
I agree that the Christian IQ there is too low. It’s a small population so hard to sample. 98 for all non-Ashkenazi makes sense, including Iraqi and Euro Sephardi who should be triple digits. I’d guess Arab Christians are also in the high 90s, but they’re 1% of Israel so the effect on NIQ is negligible.
What did you norm the IQ to, that is what did you set IQ=100 as? Usually it is set at the average IQ of the UK, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
National IQ is not that meaningful for big countries like US, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. The variation of IQ within a country can be as large as that of an European country and an African country. Take Brazil. The southern Brazilian states have large White European populations while the north of the country is full of mixed/Africans. Their IQ difference is 1 SD just like between Europe and Africa. Han Chinese mean IQ is 101. But if you compare Hans and Tibetans/Uyghurs, there's also a 1 SD difference.
1. North/South Korea - basically all nutrition impact
2. Africa, Persia - poor education systems + nutrition
3. Surprised you didn't include Antarctica.
4. Israel scoring low indicates another hidden elephant in almost all of these colours - distribution. Some countries have elites that would score extremely high (Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA, South Africa) but due to the political system there are sizeable minority population with no nutrition and no education.
5. I'm still doubtful of Chinese data, but their nutrition is very good due to extreme overfishing of the whole Pacific (and other Oceans...)
6. I would argue with equal nutrition and education Sub-saharan Africa will have the highest IQ outliers in the world.
In conclusion, it's disappointing i haven't seen a good data on IQ, still. You can easily find huge databases from online IQ tests. Mensa has a short one, very robust, globally taken. These tests often have additional questions so data scientist could triangulate proper setting for each country to get an actually reliable result to correct for nurture. Hope i'm wrong and there is such statistics available.
Yeah, at age 17 in the Minessota Transracial Adoption Study the average of white adoptees raised in a middle class white household was 105.6, and for blacks it was 89.4.(The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability)
Also i forgat to add one thing - human growth hormones - are what causes almost all of the genetic and most non-genetic, non-education related variation in intelligence among fellow humans. Very simple.
Over the past 80 years there has been a massive selection against political dissidents in North Korea. This may have influenced IQ, unsure to what extent though.
I see North Korea number isn't to deviatted from other estimates which It really proves the case of hereditarianism I mean literally there are way richer and with better quality of life countries with less IQ
The Singapore IQ doesn't doesn't really sit right according to its demographics (assuming a hardcore hereditarian viewpoint). With 10% Indians and 15% Malays, it would be more believable if Singapore was closer to being high 90s rather being in same ballpark as East Asia proper. 25% non-Chinese isn't everything, but it certainly isn't nothing. Opponents of immigration to East Asia should take this seriously and spend some time on how to make sense of this. As it is, one could easily make the case that an East Asian country could be 25% non-East Asian, and still perform as well as pure East Asian countries.
A cope could be to say the Indians are literally all Brahmins (no idea if this is the case). But if it's been multiple generations like this, and the American H1B posters are correct that there's actually no difference between Indians and all of them are genetically bound to be retarded, regression to the mean should have caused the Indians diminish significantly in intelligence over time. Again, that's assuming they're all even Brahmin, which would be the strongest case for why they don't seem to lower Singapore's IQ enough to bring them lower than racially homogenous East Asia.
Completely wrong. Iran has been confirmed as a top 5 nation (2nd, 3rd and 4th globally based on 2022, 2024 and 2025 studies and meta-studies) in average IQ in several independent recent studies, alongside China and South Korea, yet you jokers keep using data from the least representative and completely outdated study (Lynn & Vanhanen) to bolster your bias and your preconceived ideological narratives.
Mainland China is roughly genetically the same as Taiwan province, so it seems likely that Mainland China's IQ will converge to 105 once the next generation grows up with the newer and enhanced environment.
Seb, have you had a look at these PISA numbers from Iran?
This looks suspiciously high, but Iran is the birthplace of the world empire, and they've both become more literate and better performers on the Math Olympiad. They're eighth in total gold medsls these last ten games.
The numbers from Subsaharan African countries seem downright preposterous. No way does any country in Africa have an average I.Q. in the 90s. Let alone a dozen of them.
And my mistake! It's IIT with the funny number. PISA is much more believable, but is missing many countries. I do wonder if all the same Iran might have a legit score somewhere in the mid-90s rather than mid-80s all the same, but no way could it be in the mid-100s.
Better is to predict many external outcomes and average across them to find the best set of estimates. This is best on the assumption that maximizing reliability and construct validity will maximizing predictive validity. I suggest you download the SPI and use the indicators as your outcomes. Average across them (remember to use absolute values, or reverse by the S factor loading), and see which set does the best. https://www.socialprogress.org/
Or instead of averaging, make a model that predicts outcomes from some cases where you are really quite sure of the correct answer. Ideally Lasso regression IMO.
National IQ have been my main obsession for the last few days. Spending countless of hours. Figuring out the correct numbers etc.
Thank you for this beautiful post seb. This feels like Christmas
About SE Europe results:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Romani_population_average_estimate.png#mw-jump-to-license
There's also the issue of selective migration. Personally, I doubt the genotypic IQ of natives in those countries is much lower than those of NW Europeans.
Good point. And good source.
Why Israel IQ is inferior to many white gentile countries?
African/Arab immigration.
why do you think for example Morroco has a lower iq than subsaharan African countries like kenya?
Not sure if this is the updated dataset, but I suspect that the cause is African admixture.
Yeah but isn't kenya pure african ancestry, yet Kenyans score higher than morrocans on iq tests
seems no answer sadly
In fact according to this Kenya scores higher than India a non African country. I am curious on why you think that is and why india has lower iq than other Asian countries
They are less affluent, and we lack recent data, as no study has analyzed 1.4 million genomes from Indian-specific populations for cognitive architecture.
It seems plausible as they have a high proportion of them as I have checked
About half of "israel's" jewish population is mizrahi jews and a growing segment of the ashkenazi jews are the highly inbred ultra-orthodox jews. The secular, well-educated ashkenazi with somewhat western values are increasingly a rare breed.
Israel is only 35% Ashkenazi at most. Rest are Mizrahi 40% (IQ 95), Arabs 20% (IQ 85), Others (Ethiopians etc.) 5%.
Crem here https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/updated-estimates-of-iqs-within-israel said Israel has a g of ~97 (~110 Ashkenazi, ~100 non-Ashkenazi Jews and Russians, ~85 Arabs). PISA scores are lower I think mostly due to effort, when you extract the g-factor the score jumps quite a bit. Look here and command f Israel: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/cf9910a0-en.pdf?expires=1723936109&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F5B444018B0E83CDC886D6DC1AFC76A
Those results are suspect because Arab Christians have the highest PET pass rate, even higher than Jews.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/christian-arabs-top-countrys-matriculation-charts/
https://israel365news.com/280454/christian-arabs-likely-graduate-high-school-israel/#Yw4jp6yTtgoxsjcA.97
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Israel#High_school_and_matriculation_exams
Additionally, Mizrahim have among the highest attrition rates. Only 66% took the exam, compared with 71% of Muslims, 80% of Ashkenazim, and 85% of Christians. That's bound to deflate the Christian Arab IQ and inflate the Mizrahi IQ, assuming that data is correct all else being equal.
There’s a lot of cheating on the test in church schools. Their income is lower too.
Source on both of those claims?
Income on Wikipedia, you can google for cheating scandal stuffs.
I agree that the Christian IQ there is too low. It’s a small population so hard to sample. 98 for all non-Ashkenazi makes sense, including Iraqi and Euro Sephardi who should be triple digits. I’d guess Arab Christians are also in the high 90s, but they’re 1% of Israel so the effect on NIQ is negligible.
What did you norm the IQ to, that is what did you set IQ=100 as? Usually it is set at the average IQ of the UK, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
UK Whites, if not I artificially set the UK's IQ to 99.2 (which seems to be the average when samples are normed to the mean of UK Whites).
National IQ is not that meaningful for big countries like US, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, etc. The variation of IQ within a country can be as large as that of an European country and an African country. Take Brazil. The southern Brazilian states have large White European populations while the north of the country is full of mixed/Africans. Their IQ difference is 1 SD just like between Europe and Africa. Han Chinese mean IQ is 101. But if you compare Hans and Tibetans/Uyghurs, there's also a 1 SD difference.
Did you adjust for median age when you calculate National IQs? Aging causes cognitive decline. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1749926101990670572
Interesting, almost zero genetics involved!
1. North/South Korea - basically all nutrition impact
2. Africa, Persia - poor education systems + nutrition
3. Surprised you didn't include Antarctica.
4. Israel scoring low indicates another hidden elephant in almost all of these colours - distribution. Some countries have elites that would score extremely high (Iran, Israel, Turkey, USA, South Africa) but due to the political system there are sizeable minority population with no nutrition and no education.
5. I'm still doubtful of Chinese data, but their nutrition is very good due to extreme overfishing of the whole Pacific (and other Oceans...)
6. I would argue with equal nutrition and education Sub-saharan Africa will have the highest IQ outliers in the world.
In conclusion, it's disappointing i haven't seen a good data on IQ, still. You can easily find huge databases from online IQ tests. Mensa has a short one, very robust, globally taken. These tests often have additional questions so data scientist could triangulate proper setting for each country to get an actually reliable result to correct for nurture. Hope i'm wrong and there is such statistics available.
Israel's low score is largely due to low effort: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/cf9910a0-en.pdf?expires=1723936109&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F5B444018B0E83CDC886D6DC1AFC76A
Cremieux factored out the g and the scores went up a lot: https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/updated-estimates-of-iqs-within-israel
I feel like you are over-estimating the affect of nutrition. In U.S., Blacks had less IQ than other races even when controlled for income.
Can you share a study where IQs were compared when controlling for income, nutrition, neighbourhood and education level?
Yeah, at age 17 in the Minessota Transracial Adoption Study the average of white adoptees raised in a middle class white household was 105.6, and for blacks it was 89.4.(The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability)
Also i forgat to add one thing - human growth hormones - are what causes almost all of the genetic and most non-genetic, non-education related variation in intelligence among fellow humans. Very simple.
Over the past 80 years there has been a massive selection against political dissidents in North Korea. This may have influenced IQ, unsure to what extent though.
Why is Kosovo such a big outlier?
No idea. Probably selective migration + differential fertility.
Probably also partly because of SE Europe Gypsy-factor as mentioned by Stefan above.
There are actually very few gypsies
dysgenic migration, and in the case of Kosovo and Albania it continues for several centuries
I see North Korea number isn't to deviatted from other estimates which It really proves the case of hereditarianism I mean literally there are way richer and with better quality of life countries with less IQ
I imputed that one.
Buuuut they do suprisingly well in science competitions. Right tail is strong, I guess.
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2019/07/22/North-Korea-finishes-fourth-at-International-Mathematical-Olympiad/2051563808996/
Indeed, Qatar and North Korea are good examples of a rich country with low IQ and a poor country with high IQ to prove the hereditarian position.
What are you even comparing with 'richness' when comparing a capitalist country to a true communist country?
"Richness" isn't just denominated in US dollars, it is standard of living.
How much does being raised in a Western country improve the IQ of Third Worlders?
Presumably through health and nutrition, though the evidence for it is not great at the moment.
The Singapore IQ doesn't doesn't really sit right according to its demographics (assuming a hardcore hereditarian viewpoint). With 10% Indians and 15% Malays, it would be more believable if Singapore was closer to being high 90s rather being in same ballpark as East Asia proper. 25% non-Chinese isn't everything, but it certainly isn't nothing. Opponents of immigration to East Asia should take this seriously and spend some time on how to make sense of this. As it is, one could easily make the case that an East Asian country could be 25% non-East Asian, and still perform as well as pure East Asian countries.
A cope could be to say the Indians are literally all Brahmins (no idea if this is the case). But if it's been multiple generations like this, and the American H1B posters are correct that there's actually no difference between Indians and all of them are genetically bound to be retarded, regression to the mean should have caused the Indians diminish significantly in intelligence over time. Again, that's assuming they're all even Brahmin, which would be the strongest case for why they don't seem to lower Singapore's IQ enough to bring them lower than racially homogenous East Asia.
And none of that is to speak of the Malays
Completely wrong. Iran has been confirmed as a top 5 nation (2nd, 3rd and 4th globally based on 2022, 2024 and 2025 studies and meta-studies) in average IQ in several independent recent studies, alongside China and South Korea, yet you jokers keep using data from the least representative and completely outdated study (Lynn & Vanhanen) to bolster your bias and your preconceived ideological narratives.
I reference this page a lot. Changing country names from "India" to "Ind" is somewhat cumbersome.
Mainland China is roughly genetically the same as Taiwan province, so it seems likely that Mainland China's IQ will converge to 105 once the next generation grows up with the newer and enhanced environment.
Seb, have you had a look at these PISA numbers from Iran?
This looks suspiciously high, but Iran is the birthplace of the world empire, and they've both become more literate and better performers on the Math Olympiad. They're eighth in total gold medsls these last ten games.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country
Those numbers are from an online IQ testing website, so it's not surprising that they are noisy.
The numbers from Subsaharan African countries seem downright preposterous. No way does any country in Africa have an average I.Q. in the 90s. Let alone a dozen of them.
And my mistake! It's IIT with the funny number. PISA is much more believable, but is missing many countries. I do wonder if all the same Iran might have a legit score somewhere in the mid-90s rather than mid-80s all the same, but no way could it be in the mid-100s.