Jensen on heritability, fertility, and the IQ gap

From Jensen, 1998. Population Differences In Intelligence: Causal Hypotheses. In: The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability

Genetic Implications of IQ and Fertility for Black and White Women.

Fertility is defined as the number of living children a woman (married or unmarried) gives birth to during her lifetime. If, in a breeding population, IQ (and therefore g) is consistently correlated with fertility, it will have a compounded effect on the trend of the population’s mean IQ in each generation — an increasing trend if the correlation is positive, a decreasing trend if it is negative (referred to as positive or negative selection for the trait). This consequence naturally follows from the fact that mothers’ and children’s IQs are correlated, certainly genetically and usually environmentally.

If IQ were more negatively correlated with fertility in one population than in another (for example, the American black and white populations), over two or more generations the difference between the two populations’ mean IQs would be expected to diverge increasingly in each successive generation. Since some part of the total IQ variance within each population is partly genetic (i.e., the heritability), the intergenerational divergence in population means would also have to be partly genetic. It could not be otherwise, unless one assumed that the mother-child correlation for IQ is entirely environmental (an assumption that has been conclusively ruled out by adoption studies). Therefore, in each successive generation, as long as there is a fairly consistent difference in the correlation between IQ and fertility for the black and white populations, some part of the increasing mean group difference in IQ is necessarily genetic. If fertility is negatively correlated with a desirable trait that has a genetic component, IQ for example, the trend is called dysgenic; if positively correlated, eugenic.

The phenomenon of regression toward the population mean (see Chapter 12, pp. 467—72) does not mitigate a dysgenic trend. Regression to the mean does not predict that a population’s genotypic mean in one generation regresses toward the genotypic mean of the preceding generation. In large populations, changes in the genotypic mean of a given trait from one generation to the next can come about only through positive (or negative) selection for that trait, that is, by changes in the proportion’s of the breeding population that fall into different intervals of the total distribution of the trait in question.

It is also possible that a downward genetic trend can be phenotypically masked by a simultaneous upward trend in certain environmental factors that favorably affect IQ, such as advances in prenatal care, obstetrical practices, nutrition, decrease in childhood diseases, and education. But as the positive effect of these environmental factors approaches asymptote, the downward dysgenic trend will continue, and the phenotypic (IQ) difference between the populations will begin to increase.

Is there any evidence for such a trend in the American black and white populations? There is, at least presently and during the last half of this century, since U.S. Census data relevant to this question have been available. A detailed study based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and affiliated agencies was conducted by Daniel Vining, a demographer at the University of Pennsylvania. His analyses indicate that, if IQ is, to some degree heritable (which it is), then throughout most of this century (and particularly since about 1950) there has been an overall downward trend in the genotypic IQ of both the white and the black populations. The trend has been more unfavorable for the black population.

But how could the evidence for a downward trend in the genotypic component of IQ be true, when other studies have shown a gradual rise in phenotypic IQ over the past few decades? (This intergenerational rise in IQ, known as the “Flynn effect,” is described in Chapter 10, pp. 318-22). Since the evidence for both of these effects is solid, the only plausible explanation is that the rapid improvement in environmental conditions during this century has offset and even exceeded the dysgenic trend. However, this implies that the effect of the dysgenic trend should become increasingly evident at the phenotypic level as improvements in the environmental factors that enhance mental development approach their effective asymptote for the whole population.

Table 12.7 shows the fertility (F) of white and black women within each one standard deviation interval of the total distribution of IQ in each population. (The average fertility estimates include women who have had children and women who have not had any children by age thirty-four.) Assuming a normal distribution (which is closely approximated for IQ within the range of ± 2s), the table also shows: (a) the estimated proportion (P) of the population within each interval, (b) the product of F X P, and (c) the mean IQ of the women within each interval. The average fertility in each of the IQ intervals and the average IQs in those intervals are negatively correlated (-.86 for whites, ‑.96 for blacks), indicating a dysgenic trend in both populations, though stronger in the black population.

Now, as a way of understanding the importance of Table 12.7, let us suppose that the mean IQ for whites was 100 and the mean IQ for blacks was 85 in the generation preceding that of the present sample of women represented in Table 12.7. Further, suppose that in that preceding generation the level of fertility was the same within each IQ interval. Then their offspring (that is, the present generation) would have an overall mean IQ equal to the weighted mean of the average IQ within each IQ interval (the weights being the proportion, P, of the population falling within each IQ interval). These means would also be 100 and eighty-five for the white and black populations, respectively.

But now suppose that in the present generation there is negative selection for IQ, with the fertility of the women in each IQ interval exactly as shown in Table 12.7. (This represents the actual condition in 1978 as best as we can determine.)

What then will be the overall mean IQ of the subsequent generation of offspring? The weights that must be used in the calculation are the products of the average fertility (F) in each interval and the proportion (P) of women in each interval (i.e., the of values F X P, shown in Table 12.7). The predicted overall weighted mean IQ, then, turns out to be 98.2 for whites and 82.6 for blacks, a drop of 1.8 IQ points and of 2.4 IQ points, respectively. The effect thus increases the W-B IQ difference from 15 IQ points in the parent generation to 15.6 IQ points in the offspring generation — an increase in the W-B difference of 0.6 IQ points in a single generation. Provided that IQ has substantial heritability within each population, this difference must be partly genetic. So if blacks have had a greater relative increase in environmental advantages that enhance IQ across the generations than whites have had, the decline of the genetic component of the black mean would be greater than the decline of the white genetic mean, because of environmental masking, as previously explained. We do not know just how many generations this differential dysgenic trend has been in effect, but extrapolated over three or four generations it would have worsening consequences for the comparative proportions in each population that fall above or below 100 IQ. (Of course, fertility rates could change in the positive direction, but so far there is no evidence of this.) In the offspring generation of the population samples of women shown in Table 12.7, the percentage of each population above/below IQ 100 would be: whites 43.6%/56.4%, blacks 12.4%/87.6% (assuming no increase in environmental masking between the generations). The W/B ratio above 100 IQ is about 43.6%/12.4% = 3.5; the B/W ratio below 100 IQ is .87.6%/56.4% = 1.55. These ratios or any approximations of them would have considerable consequences if, for example, an IQ of 100 is a critical cutoff score for the better-paid types of employment in an increasingly technological and information-intensive economy (see Chapter 14). Because generation time (measured as mother’s age at the birth of her first child) is about two years less in blacks than in whites, the dysgenic trend would compound faster over time in the black population than in the white. Therefore, the figures given above probably underestimate any genetic component of the W-B IQ difference attributable to differential fertility.

This prediction follows from recent statistics on fertility rates. A direct test of this effect would require a comparison of the average IQ of women in one generation with the average IQ of all of their children who constitute the next generation. Such cross-generational IQ data are available from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY). Large numbers of youths, including whites and blacks, originally selected as part of a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population, were followed to maturity. The mean IQ of the women in this group was compared with the mean IQ of their school-age children. Whereas the mean IQ difference between the white and black mothers in the study was 13.2 IQ points, the difference between the white and black children was 17.5 IQ points. That is, the overall mean W-B IQ difference in this sample had increased by about four IQ points in one generation. As there is no indication that the children had been reared in less advantaged environments than their mothers, this effect is most reasonably attributable to the negative correlation between the mothers’ IQs and their fertility, which is more marked in the NLSY sample than in the Census sample represented in Table 12.7. But I have not found any bona fide data set that disconfirms either the existence of a dysgenic trend for IQ of the population as a whole or the widening disparity in the mean W-B IQ difference.