The cause-effect could not be the opposite?

Yes, I too find this attitude of holding back the Gifted disgusting.

I’m reminded of a seminar my wife dragged me to on how to navigate the New York Public school system a few weeks ago in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I asked a question on which schools stream gifted students, and the presenter refused to answer the question, then added that Gifted programs weren’t all they were cracked up to be, and anyway who wants to send their kid to a class full of antisocial kids, and that regular classrooms were just as enriching as Gifted classrooms. Then she encouraged the mostly SWPL audience to send their kids to the lowest SES schools, to help “balance” the classrooms.

IMO, the reason a parent should send their Gifted kid to a Gifted class is NOT for enrichment, but for socialization. What most idiots educators, don’t seem to understand is that the Gifted – especially Very or Profoundly Gifted – are likely to be socially ostracized by the regular/dumber folk that they are surrounded by. But rather than allow a Gifted child to develop normally, they are more interested in providing every opportunity to stupid kids.

And from the paper itself “… the negative effect of IQ on [fertility] is almost two times larger for women than for men. When education is introduced as a control, however, the adjusted effect becomes statistically nonsignificant for both men and women. Thus we interpret the effect of IQ on [fertility] to be indirect through education, or, in other words, education explains (in the sense of mediating) the effect of IQ on [fertility] as hypothesized.”

Similarly there is an IQ/fertility correlation in the GSS but not in the regression.

However I’m currently reading through some more research and this interpretation might be wrong as well.

So to summarize what seems to contradict all conventional wisdom:
1) Intelligence does not depress fertility.
2) Female education is the primary reason for lower fertility.
3) Female education lowers fertility primarily by stemming unplanned pregnancies.

I do feel, however, that early entrance would be a lot better than acceleration (or starting early). The latest results from the Terman Study (The Longevity Project) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/science/19longevity_excerpt.html?pagewanted=1 – show that students who start school early actually have social problems and stunted development (this would have great applicability for the gifted, as Terman students were also gifted). But – students who skip grades have no such problems with social adjustment (apparently, having the opportunity to play during early childhood really does matter). As someone who has gone to an early entrance program myself, I’ve noticed that almost all the students there are almost universally glad that they’ve went (and also do much better than most college students), and the students there aren’t all super-geniuses either.

I might add that the Peter Thiel thing could also increase fertility among the educated, if it spreads.

@ Alyson,

IQ seems to predict academic achievement controlling for SES. On the other hand, SES only weakly predicts academic achievement.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/03/ses-and-iq.html

Also, people tend to mate with others with a similar educational background.

Schwartz, C. and R. D. Mare, Trends in Assortative Marriages from 1940 to 2003, Demography, 2005, 42 (4), 621646.

do you want to just argue, or do you want to see where we differ? i did not say that genetics was the absolute determinant of IQ. i stated explicitly that the sorting was imperfect. in other words, there is a correlation which exists outside of environmental factors because of past meritocracy and assortative mating. i appreciate that you did take the time to look into the literature (i’m familiar with a lot of what you cited, and have even blogged it).

Also, it should be noted that Charles Murray found the same fertility levels for low and high IQ white women in the NLSY (although a somewhat higher fertility level for less intelligent blacks).

Mortality between the ages of 1 and 40 for all educational groups in developed countries is quite small. In the US, the probability of a 1-year-old black male (the riskiest group) to die before the age of 40 is 6.2%. For a 1-year-old white female it’s 1.7%. It’s not enough to cancel the gap in fertility rates.

Mortality has gone down significantly for all educational groups in the last 200 years. Educated people benefited most, because infectious diseases used to be a major killer, and bacteria don’t check your credentials.

Im glad you pointed that out. Males and females have different reproductive strategies overall, and its not surprising that educated women who have choices and are not dependent upon men for their finances might choose to pursue their own naturally preferred “less in number but higher quality” strategy.

Less educated women may also be more prone to have to deal with the “higher number damn the quality” male reproductive strategy for various reason, including religious influence, (Education and religosity also correlate negatively) or economic necessity.

I’d guess: Mexicans, Indonesians, and Middle Easterners to start. GCochran can correct me if I’m wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations#National_IQ_estimates

I don’t live and die by the specific numbers on the chart, but the trends are interesting.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/6/623.short

I found nothing on Google scholar that I could use to tear apart the data on IQ and education. Which is what I want to see, not just that “on average, people with advanced degrees have a higher IQ than people who do not attend college. ” Why? Because a few geniuses can drag that average up and leave a lot of people with advanced degrees feeling pretty smug about their standing with little reason to.

I did find, on the other hand evidence that genetics are not the be all and end all of IQ, and that lack of education, because education and income correlate as well as IQ and education, can reduce IQ.

“For traits that are primarily determined by genes, identical twins will show no variation, but fraternal twins will. For traits that are determined by environment, identical twins and fraternal twins will show similar patterns of variation in the trait. For traits that reflect an interaction between genes and environment, identical twins will show somewhat less variation than fraternal twins. (Confused about twin studies?)

What Turkheimer found was dramatic: for the families in the study at the very bottom of the socioeconomic scale, shared family environment accounted for 60 percent of the variance in IQ; and the contribution of genes was close to zero. (A third variable, non-shared environment, which includes factors such as gender, accounted for the remainder.)”

http://sparkaction.org/content/new-thinking-children-poverty-iq

Which leaves the question of whether or not the overall IQ humanity will be harmed by the slower reproductive rate of the highly educated firmly on the table. Not a foregone conclusion as some would like to make it seem.

And thats without even tearing into the tests themselves.