linkfest – 03/06/13

sunday linkfest on wednesday evening. what is the world coming to?

rand paul ftw, btw! (^_^)

We Aren’t the World – a W.E.I.R.D. article.

African-American’s Y chromosome sparks shift in evolutionary timetable – “Scientists say an African-American male’s odd genetic signature suggests that the human Y chromosome’s lineage goes back further in time than they thought — perhaps due to interbreeding with other populations such as Neanderthals.” – see also dienekes: Extremely old (237–581 kya) root of human Y-chromosome phylogeny.

Counting blue gods – more pie(-chart)s than in a pie-eating contest! from the awesome epigone.

For every person that doesn’t want kids there are 25 that do. Is that so? – from jayman.

It’s not because research is cheaper there – “Perhaps among the many genes with small effects [on iq] there are a few with big effects….” – @evoandproud.

HVGIQ: Jamaica – from jason malloy. see also steve sailer: Average IQ in Jamaica.

How much mental illness is lifestyle-related? – from mangan.

Genomewide diversity in the Levant (Haber et al. 2013) – “Our results show recent genetic stratifications in the Levant are driven by the religious affiliations of the populations within the region…. Levant populations today fall into two main groups: one sharing more genetic characteristics with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians, and the other with closer genetic affinities to other Middle Easterners and Africans.” – @dienekes’.

5 Disorders Share Genetic Risk Factors, Study Finds – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, major depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Single gene might explain dramatic differences among people with schizophrenia

Is “Natural Law” Anti-Nature? – @occam’s razor.

Feet on the Autism Spectrum – “Psychotherapist Cary Terra works with adults with autism spectrum disorder…. Over many years, she’s noticed what she calls an ‘unmistakable trend’: that her patients have a tendency to sit with their feet stacked.” – *hbd chick looks down* – oops!

Rape on the Reservation – “…one in three Native women is raped over her lifetime….”

Month a baby is born ‘suggests what career they will have’ – “The time of year a baby is born can shape what profession they will embark on in later life, a new study has suggested.” – via mangan.

Lack of sleep ‘switches off’ genes – “One week of bad sleep can ‘switch off’ hundreds of genes and raise the risk of a host of illnesses including obesity and heart disease, scientists claim.”

bonus: In China, ‘red nobility’ trumps egalitarian ideal – “Relatives of communist China’s founding fathers enjoy privileged status in politics and business that runs counter to party ideology.” – this one’s for luke and anatoly. (^_^)

bonus bonus: China imprisons four men for ‘ghost marriage’ corpse bride trafficking – “Yanchuan court jails men for digging up and selling bodies in afterlife custom of matching dead women to deceased bachelors.”

bonus bonus bonus: At Largest Religious Festival, Some Abandon Elderly – “At the Maha Kumbh Mela in India, families ditch older relatives in the crowds.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Beppe Grillo: Cronyism has hurt Italian science

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Why Did (or Didn’t) the Meerkat Cross the Road? – hierarchy’s a b*tch.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Giant ancient camel remains discovered in Canadian Arctic <<- best headline of the week!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Report: Chinese Third-Graders Falling Behind U.S. High School Students in Math, Science (~_^)

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net tax contributors in italy

northern italian regions or southern italian regions? what do you think?

stolen from zero hedge:

hmmmm. now where have i seen this north-south divide in italy before? oh yeah!:

- Mapping the 2009 Pisa Results for Spain and Italy – @a reluctant apostate
- Chalk and cheese – @those who can see (come back to us m.g.! =( )
- inbreeding in italy
- democracy in italy
- more nepotism in southern than in northern italy…
- news from italy

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italy – reversal of fortune?

who knows?

but italy could be another place to look for a possible rapid inbreeding drop-off/rapid iq increase connection (see yesterday’s post) just ’cause the consang data are available. and they did, indeed, have a pretty rapid decrease in cousin marriage rates — at least in northern italy — not so much in the south. (i can’t think of any other examples where consang data are readily available — i mean without delving into church records or something like that.)

no idea if there are any early iq data available for italy, though. i won’t be looking for them (iq questions? – meh) — just wanted to let anyone who might be interested know that the numbers for the drop in inbreeding do exist for italy. (^_^)

look for the consang data here: Consanguinity, Inbreeding and Genetic Drift in Italy (tables also available here).

i put together a table of the first and last lustra in cavalli-sforza’s data set for a previous post, but there are data for each lustrum in between, too. you can get an idea of the scale of the drop-off (in the regions where there was a drop-off) from my nifty table:

previously: japan – reversal of fortune?

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western european societal values

following up on the “mexican societal values” post — someone suggested via email that the world values scores on the same “justifed” questions for greece and southern italy might likely be lower than the scores for mexico, while the scores from scandinavian countries and maybe germany might likely be higher than for american whites. i agreed that those two scenarios could possibly be the case. i decided to check.

first of all — no greece in the most recent world values survey (dr*t!). i looked at all the major western european nations i could find in the most recent world values survey wave (2005-2008): finland, france, germany, great britain, italy, the netherlands, norway, spain, and sweden. (documentation of the data can be found here.)

i had planned to sort the data by ethnic group so as to just look at whites, but many of these countries didn’t record the ethnicity of the respondents (*facepalm*). on the first question — “Is it ever justifiable to claim government benefits to which you are not entitled” — for those countries that did ask ethnicity, the total scores were, with the exception of france, pretty similar to the scores for just whites (presumably because, despite all the immigration to europe, it was mostly white europeans that were surveyed)…

nation – total score (whites only score)
france – 51.60% (41.10%)
finland – 55.90% (55.80%)
sweden – 61.60% (62.40%)
great britain – 63.60% (65.50%)
italy – 74.70% (74.70%)

…so i decided to use the total scores for each nation instead of just those for whites. keep this in mind. the scores are, at best, an approximation of how native europeans feel — at worst, they’re way off!

as in the previous post, i looked at four of the “justifiable” questions:

Please tell me for each of the following statements whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between [on a scale from 1 to 10, never to always]:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled.
- Avoiding a fare on public transport.
- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance.
- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties.

here are the results for each country of those who answered “Never justifiable” (click on charts for LARGER versions — you can compare these to the mexican and american scores here)…

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

the netherlands ftw! but what’s with all the high scores from italy?! isn’t that interesting?! we all know that italy is pretty corrupt — maybe even they are just sick and tired of all the corruption? dunno.

all of these western european nations scored higher than mexico on the first two questions: claiming government benefits and avoiding a fare — although the swedes came pretty close to white mexicans when it came to avoiding a fare on public transport.

only italy and the netherlands scored higher than white americans wrt claiming government benefits — and germany, italy, and the netherlands scored higher than white americans on the avoiding a fare question. swedes scored lower than white americans.

except for the netherlands, italy, and spain, most of the europeans scored around the same as mexicans wrt cheating on taxes. go figure! they all scored lower than white americans.

and sweden, france, germany, great britain, and even finland scored very like mexicans when it came to accepting a bribe — quite a few of them think that sometimes it could be justified. and again, except for the italians and the dutch, everyone scored lower than white americans.

so, no — on the whole, scandinavians and germans don’t outscore white americans on these societal values questions. the dutch generally do, though — as do frequently the italians!
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what about southern italians versus mexicans? here are the results for some of the different regions of italy (i excluded those regions where the sample size was less than 50). i’ve color-coded the regions — north=blue, central=green, south=red:

- Claiming government benefits to which you are not entitled. – Never justifiable.

- Avoiding a fare on public transport. – Never justifiable.

- Cheating on taxes if you have a chance. – Never justfiable.

- Someone accepting a bribe in the course of their duties. – Never justifiable.

all italians — including southern italians — score much, much higher than mexicans on the claiming government benefits question — like by thirty to forty percentage points. similar story for avoiding a public fare, although lazio and tuscany in central italy scored only ca. ten to fifteen points higher than (white) mexicans in this case.

more italians — including sicilians — agree with mexicans on the cheating on taxes question. this time, lazio, tuscany, and lombardy all scored very much the same as mexicans. and all italians say that they are not tolerant of bribe taking much more so than mexicans — especially southern italians (sicilians and puglians) — even though they don’t seem to be able to (heh) put their money where their mouths are.

the interesting divide in italy appears to be not so much a north-south divide as a central area vs. north/south. while venice and lombardy in the north did tend to score highest most of the time, it was the central regions of tuscany and lazio that tended to score lowest, not the southern regions.
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what would be interesting to know is how these various groups (italians, swedes, etc.) feel about these issue in the united states — iow, how would italian-americans respond? i’ll try to see if i can find out. stay tuned!
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previously: mexican societal values and more nepotism in southern than in northern italy… and democracy in italy

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runs of homozygosity again

**update below**

here’s an exciting new paper!: Genomic Patterns of Homozygosity in Worldwide Human Populations. i don’t have access to the paper itself, but there are lots o’ neat figures and tables in the supplemental data [opens pdf] that relate to runs of homozygosity (roh). roh are identical stretches of dna within an individual’s genome (i.e. identical on each of the dna strands, paternally and maternally inherited). (roh shouldn’t be confused with blocks of identity by descent [ibd], which i did once! ibd blocks are identical stretches of dna as compared between different individuals, iiuc.)

recall that possessing lots of long roh indicates that one’s parents are/were quite similiar genetically speaking. that can be as a result of a couple of different genetic scenarios like (as greying wanderer has brought up a lot recently) simply being from a small sized population (i.e. having a small effective population size) and/or from regular inbreeding (consanguineous/endogamous mating). so, a population having a lot of long roh is either small and/or inbreeds a lot. populations having LOTS of short roh have probably been through some sort of bottleneck (see previous post).

in the paper i looked at in that previous post, the researchers had looked at the different roh lengths for large, regional populations like “europeans” or “east asians.” amongst other things, they had found that some of my regular inbreeders — the fbd marriage folks — had some of the highest numbers of medium and long roh, a state of genetic affairs which likely reflects their long-term close mating patterns. interestingly, the researchers had found that east asians had roh lengths similar to those of europeans across the board, something which surprised me since, at least according to what i’ve been reading, east asians (i.e. the chinese) have been inbreeding for a much longer time than europeans. one drawback of that previous study, though, was that, apart from the french, most of the european populations they looked at were peripheral groups who have had a tendency to inbreed more than my “core” europeans (see mating patterns in europe series below ↓ in left-hand column).

the new paper suffers from some of the same problems since the data come from the same sources (hgdp-ceph and hapmap phase 3 populations), so northern europeans — apart from the french — aren’t included in this paper either. (what can you do? it’s early days yet. i look forward to when there’s lots more genetic data available out there for teh scientists to work with! (^_^) )

what the researchers in this paper have done, though, is to look at both the different mean lengths of roh in each of the different populations sampled AND they looked at total numbers of roh within individuals for each population. this has, i think, drawn out some interesting differences between the populations.

first, here are two graphics from the supplmental data (linked to above). click on each for LARGER views (they should open in new tabs/windows — you might have to click on them again there to super-size them).

i’ve highlighted a handful of populations i want to focus on ’cause i know a little something about their historic mating patterns: the bedouin (as a proxy for the arabs — note that the bedouin have probably inbred more than more settled arabs); italians (not sure if they’re northern or southern italians or a mix of both — however, there are tuscans in the samples with which these “italians” can be compared); pathan or pastuns (more fbd marriage folks, like the bedouins/arabs); and han chinese (there are some northern han chinese with whom this groups can be compared). ok. here are the charts:

as you can see, the researchers have split up the roh into three classes (note that the short and medium classes here are a lot shorter than those in the paper looked at previously):

- A: 0.25-0.40 Mb (short)
- B: 0.6-1.2 Mb (medium)
- C: 0-35 Mb (long)

the interesting thing in the first chart above (Fig. S3 – Mean ROH Length for Each of the Three Size Classes in Each Population), is that the han chinese have lower means of roh length in all of the size classes compared to the other populations i’ve highlighted. in the previous study, the researchers found that east asians had similar means to europeans for all roh lengths. i found this surprising since, from what i’ve read, the han chinese have been inbreeding for a longer period of time than europeans. what might be confounding the results though, once again, is the fact that nw europeans (the outbreeders extraordinaire) are not really included in either of these studies apart from a handful of french samples.

in this latest study, both the bedouin and the pashtun, for instance, have higher means — and wider spreads — of long (class C) roh than the italians, which is what i would’ve expected since those two groups (the bedouins and the pashtuns) are, being fbd marriage folks, serious inbreeders. perhaps the reason the han chinese long roh mean is comparatively low is partly due to the fact that they historically practiced mother’s brother’s daughter (mbd) marriage which doesn’t push towards such close inbreeding as fbd marriage. still, i would’ve expected to see greater means of roh for the chinese than the italians — or, at least, around the same. not so much lower. (unless the italians practiced fbd marriage, too — or fzd marriage — but i don’t think so.)

if you look at the second chart (Fig. S4 – Total Number of ROH in Individual Genomes), however, you’ll see that, overall, the han chinese have more short, medium and long roh totally in individual genomes than any of the other three populations i’ve highlighted. both the bedouins and the pashtuns have greater numbers/wider total spread of long roh than the italians, but the han chinese have a much greater total number of long roh than any of the other three groups — three or four times as many.

but they’re, on average, shorter long roh don’t forget. (confusing, eh?!)

perhaps this is what you get when you have — as the chinese have had — a pretty good-sized effective population size for such a long time. there have been a LOT of han chinese for — wow — millennia.

so, it looks like this (in this order of inbrededness — i think):

- bedouins: highest mean, and very wide spread, of long roh; high total numbers, and widest spread, of long roh.
- pashtun: low mean, but widest spread, of long roh; low total number, but very wide spread, of long roh.
- han chinese: very low mean, and very narrow spread, of long roh; highest total numbers, and wide spread, of long roh.
- italians: low mean, and rather wide spread, of long roh; very low total number, and very small spread, of long roh.

other interesting points are that:

- the tuscans/tsi (toscani) appear to have lower short, medium and long mean roh than the generic “italian” category. however, the tuscans have lower total numbers of long roh than the “italians” while the toscani (tsi), on the other hand, appear to have a greater total number of long roh than the “italians.” while the tuscan samples and the toscani/tsi samples are from different studies (hgdp vs. hapmap), they are all supposed to be from tuscany, so it’s surprising that they’re so different. perhaps the individuals in the toscani/tsi sample were more closely related somehow?

- the northern han samples have lower short, medium and long mean roh than the generic “han” category. this would fit my general impression that historically inbreeding has been greater in southern china than in the north. however, the total number of long roh are greater in the northern han sample than in the “han” sample. not sure what that means.

don’t forget that there can be all sorts of reasons for differences in roh: inbreeding vs. outbreeding, yes, but also effective population size, population movement (migration in or out), bottlenecks, etc. i just happen to be interested in trying to pick out the effects of inbreeding/outbreeding — if possible.
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**update - here are a couple of excerpts from the article (thnx, b.b.!) [pgs. 277, 279-281]:

“Size Classification of ROH

“Separately in each population, we modeled the distribution of ROH lengths as a mixture of three Gaussian distributions that we interpreted as representing three ROH classes: (A) short ROH measuring tens of kb that probably reflect homozygosity for ancient haplotypes that contribute to local LD [linkage disequilibrium] patterns, (B) intermediate ROH measuring hundreds of kb to several Mb that probably result from background relatedness owing to limited population size, and (c) long ROH measuring multiple Mb that probably result from recent parental relatedness….

“In each population, the size distribution of ROH appears to contain multiple components (Figure 2A). Using a three-component Gaussian mixture model, we classified ROH in each population into three size classes (Figure 2B): short (class A), intermediate (class B), and long (class C). Size boundaries between different classes vary across populations (Table S1); however, considering all populations, all A-B boundaries are strictly smaller than all B-C boundaries (Figure 2C). The mean sizes of class A and B ROH are similar among populations from the same geographic region (Figure S3), with the exception that Africa and East Asia have greater variability. The class C mean is generally largest in the Middle East, Central/South Asia, and the Americas and smallest in East Asia (Figure S3), with the exception that the Tujia population has the largest values. In the admixed Mexican population (MXL), mean ROH sizes are similar to those in European populations. In the admixted African American population (ASW), however, mean ROH sizes are among the smallest in our data set, notably smaller than in most Africans and Europeans.

“Geographic Pattern of ROH

“Several patterns emerge from a comparison of the per-individual total lengths of ROH across populations (Figure 3). First, the total lengths of class A (Figure 3A) and class B (Figure 3B) ROH generally increase with distance from Africa, rising in a stepwise fashion in successive continental groups. This trend is similar to the observed reduction in haplotype diversity with increasing distance from Africa. Second, total lengths of class C ROH (Figure 3C) do not show the stepwise increase. Instead, they are higher and more variable in most populations from the Middle East, Central/South Asia, Oceania, and the Americas than in most populations from Africa, Europe, and East Asia. This pattern suggests that a larger fraction of individuals from the Middle East, Central/South Asia, Oceanis, and the Americas tend to have higher levels of parental relatedness, in accordance with demographic estimates of high levels of consanguineous marriage particularly in populations from the Middle East and central/South Asia, and it is similar to that observed for inbreeding-coefficient and identity-by-descent estimates. Third, in the admixed ASW and MXL individuals, total lengths of ROH in each size class are similar to those observed in populations from Africa and Europe, respectively (Figure 3).

“The total numbers of ROH per individual (Figure S4) show similar patterns to those observed for total lengths (Figure 3). However, in East Asian populations, total numbers of class B and class C ROH per individual are notably more variable across populations than are ROH total lengths.”

previously: runs of homozygosity and inbreeding (and outbreeding) and ibd and historic mating patterns in europe

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who’s outbreeding the most?

ron (a little facetiously i think) asks: “Is there any evidence that the Germans in America have become heavy inbreeders?”

i highly doubt it (and no one around here suggested that, btw). but it did get me to wondering which ethnic european-americans (i.e. whites) are outbreeding the most. so i checked the — you guessed it! — gss.

here are the percentages of respondents answering that their spouses were from the same ethnic background as themselves (of course, who knows how many of these people actually have mixed backgrounds):

danish = 9%
french = 9%

swedes = 12%
scottish = 13%
czechoslovakians = 18%

norwegians = 23%
polish = 27%
irish = 29%

netherlands = 31%
russians = 33%
italians = 34%
french canadians = 35%
germans = 36%
english/welsh = 39%

mexicans = 54%

i know — are these mexicans whites? i dunno. whatever. in any case, “white” mexicans marry other mexicans at a rate of 54%. that’s the highest rate for any of these groups.

the english/welsh group and the german-americans place next in the race for marrying their own kind — 39% and 36% respectively. their percentages are prolly so “high” in part because there are a lot of english-/welsh- and german-americans from which to choose.

only 9% of danish-americans are married to other danish-americans. the largest majority of them, 20%, have married german-americans. twenty percent (20%) of swedish-americans have married german-americans, too.

scottish-americans win the prize for marrying the most english/welsh at a rate of 41%. that’s more than the english/welsh marry themselves! (~_^) the czechoslovakians like the english/welsh, too — 21% of them have married anglo-/welsh-americans.

french-americans (not french canadians) like to marry irish-americans — 22% of them are married to irish-americans.

something like half of the russians, btw, are ashkenazi jews, presumably marrying other ashkenazi jews, although i didn’t actually check for that.

what’s pretty obvious from these numbers is that, apart from the mexicans, most white american ethnic groups are marrying out quite a LOT nowadays. dunno how long this has been going on (i tried to sort the data by cohort but that crashed my computer — twice. so i gave up.)

that is all.
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gss nesstar search: RACE + ETHNIC + SPETHNIC
n > 50 in all cases.

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rural white americans

i admit it: this old/new world european, rural/urban iq discussion is starting make my head spin. (o_O) but i’m going to stick with it, d*mnit! (~_^)

ok. lemme see if i’ve got this straight. ron thinks that living in a stimulating urban environment raises the average iqs of certain populations a LOT in a relatively short period of time — like in a couple of generations. examples? europeans? check. east asians? nope. mexicans? he thinks so. blacks? he doesn’t say. the upshot is: iq is not something that is strongly genetic, and so we shouldn’t be too worried about tens of millions of mexicans moving to the united states ’cause they’re just gonna become smart like us in no time at all.

hmmmm.

his proof of this consists (in part) of: 1) the rising iq of mexicans in the u.s. over the last two generations or so — only chuck the occidentalist has shown that this does NOT seem to be the case; and 2) the rising iqs of rural europeans who became urbanites after moving to the u.s., and the falling iqs of urban europeans who became country hicks after moving to the u.s. ron says:

“A much better example I should have used instead were German-Americans, who are significantly more rural than the white American average and have a Wordsum-IQ below the Greeks, Yugoslavs, Irish, and Italians. Furthermore, according to Lynn’s IQ data, Germans have one of the highest IQs in Europe, significantly above the British and far, far above the Irish, Greeks, (South) Italians, and Yugoslavs. So the reversal in America is even more inexplicable from a genetic model of IQ.

“Thus, my comparison using ‘British and Dutch’ should be changed to ‘Germans and Dutch,’ with the two highest IQ nationalities in Europe becoming two of the lowest white IQ ethnicities in America, even as they switched from being among the most urbanized Europeans to generally being rural in America, while the Greeks, Irish, Italians, and Yugoslavs moved in the opposite direction on both the IQ and rural fronts. This seems far too strong to merely be coincidence.”

so according to ron, the germans and the dutch are generally rural in america while the greeks, irish, italians, and yugoslavs are urban. and the german-americans are significantly more rural than other white americans.

ron says he got this data from the gss by looking up the following search terms (thanks, ron!):

“As for my GSS calculation, I just used RACE=WHITE, ETHNIC, and WORDSUM. My ethnic urban/rural estimate substituted RES16 for WORDSUM, and I considered Country+Farm as being ‘rural’ while ‘City+Suburb+Big City’ was considered urban. The Italians, Irish, Greeks, and Yugoslavs come out heavily urban, the Dutch heavily rural, and the Germans somewhat rural.”

i never know what people mean when they say they looked something up in the gss ’cause you can use a couple of different databases: there’s the sda @berkeley which has data from 1972 through 2010, and the nesstar database which has data from 1972 through 2006. i’ve elected to use the nesstar database ’cause you can easily download a spreadsheet of whatever data you’re looking at. if you can do that on the sda site, i haven’t figured it out (if you know, please tell me!). so, if ron used the sda site, his results might be a bit different than mine.

having said that, i looked at RACE, ETHNIC (COUNTRY OF FAMILY ORIGIN), and RES16 (TYPE OF PLACE LIVED IN WHEN 16 YRS OLD). i looked at the raw data so i could calculate the percentage of rural and urban residents for each of the different ethnic groups. rural=“in open country, but not on a farm” and “on a farm”. urban=“in a small town or city (less than 50,000),” “in a medium sized city (50,000-250,000),” “in a suburb near a large city,” and “in a large city (over 250,000).”

here’s what i got — i’ve sorted these results by most rural on the top to most urban on the bottom (i.e. the difference between rural and urban for each ethnic group) — click on chart for LARGER view (should open in a new window/tab — click on it again there to get it to be REALLY BIG):

dutch-americans certainly are very rural folk — they’re in the top 5 groups of white americans who live in rural areas, right after swiss-americans, belgian-americans, american-americans and finnish-americans. and italian-americans, greek-americans and yugoslav-americans are certainly more uban than rural — italians and greeks are very urban (confirming the stereotypes!).

but german-americans are hardly signficantly more rural than groups like anglo-, scots- or irish-americans. 33% of german-americans live (or grew up, rather, i guess) in a rural setting, while 29% of anglo-americans did, and 27% of both scots- and irish-americans. that’s awfully similar, afaics.

and what about the american-americans (“american only”)? who are they, anybody know? mightn’t they be a lot of anglo-, scots-, even irish-americans? i dunno, but they are very rural. and german-americans are less rural than they are.

also, as far as i know, finns and norwegians back in europe are pretty rural peoples — particularly in the nineteenth century when they immigrated in large numbers to the u.s. and they’re very rural here in the u.s. and today their iqs are pretty durned high back in their home countries. and the norwegian-american iq is pretty durned high here, too, despite the fact that they are still overwhelmingly rural in the u.s. (dunno about the finnish-americans.) so it doesn’t seem like you need to move to an urban place to get a high iq. you can start off rural and stay rural and still be very clever.

nope. don’t think i’m buying ron’s “move to the city and become smart” thesis. there seems to be too many exceptions to the rule (not that i don’t like those!): east asians, mexicans, anglos, scots, irish, germans, norwegians….

if i feel like it, i might process the sda gss data. then again i might not. again, if anyone knows how i can download it quickly into a spreadsheet, please let me know.

previously: more from ron unz on iq and mexican-american iq and ron unz and iq and a message for ron unz

update 07/28: see also ron unz’s rural/urban data…

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more from ron unz on iq

ron unz has a new post up: Unz on Race/IQ: The Rural/Urban Divide. he says:

“[O]ne very intriguing pattern is that according to Lynn’s IQ data certain European populations such as the South Italians, Irish, Greeks, and South Slavs tended to have IQs much lower than other European populations such as the British and the Dutch. However, according to the Wordsum-IQ data, this pattern is exactly reversed in the United States, with the descendents of immigrants from Southern Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Yugoslavia having much higher IQs than Americans of British or Dutch ancestry.”

as i (and others) have already pointed out to ron, he has no way of knowing from the gss data if italian- or irish- or greek- or slavic-americans are comparable to the italians and irish and greeks and slavs back in europe. for one thing, there is the problem with the irish of which irish we’re talking about, both in the u.s. and in the republic of ireland. native irish? scots-irish? anglo-irish? for another thing, how italian or slavic is someone who self-identifies themself as italian or slavic on the gss? fully? one-half? one-quarter? (is obama black or white?) if you don’t have your populations sorted out from the start, any comparisons will be a waste of time.

also, where are the wordsum data for all these groups? i mean, i know they’re in the gss, but how about a chart or a link or at least some search terms for the searches conducted. most sciencey bloggers nowadays present their data, not just write lengthy articles with barely any references. ron is making some strong, and possibly very interesting, claims here. someone out there might like to try to replicate his findings.

and how about looking at other data in additon to the gss (if possible)? chuck (the occidentalist) has shown that the gss wordsum scores for mexican-americans aren’t in accord with other iq measurements for that population, so maybe it would be a good idea to look at some additional data, too. just to be on the safe side. (note that i’m not discounting the gss wordsum data completely. i understand that it’s a fairly good proxy for iq scores.)
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ron also again rejects the idea that european immigrants to the u.s. (and elsewhere) might have “self-sorted” themselves — i.e. higher iq folks emigrating leaving lower iq folks behind, thus resulting in low average iqs back in europe and higher iqs for these populations in their new homes. because he believes this, ron concludes that nineteenth century european immigrants to the u.s., and europeans back in europe, have experienced extraordinary increases in their iqs in the last couple of generations:

“Finally, let us consider the European evidence. Today, the international PISA academic tests are widely regarded as one of the best means of estimating national IQs, and if we consider the 2009 PISA scores, we find that the scores were extremely similar for Ireland, Poland, Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and several other countries. Since Lynn standardizes the British IQ to 100, that indicates that Ireland and Poland today have IQs around 100, which seems quite plausible.

“However, a huge sample placed Ireland’s IQ at 87 in 1972, and Lynn himself has stated that his own Ireland research in the late 1960s convinced him that the Irish were a low IQ population, whose only hope for the future lay in a strong eugenics program. So the evidence indicates that the Irish IQ was around 87 at that point, and has risen nearly a full standard deviation in the four decades which followed. Lynn also provides two additional very large samples, which placed the Irish IQ at around 92 in the early 1990s, so at the half-way mark, the Irish IQ had risen by half the difference between the endpoints, which seems remarkably consistent.

“Obviously, for the Irish to raise their Flynn-adjusted IQ by nearly a full standard devision in just over one generation is a total absurdity from a genetic perspective; thus, the huge rise must be due to some class of ‘environmental’ factors. When we consider that Ireland had been one of most rural European countries and rapidly urbanized during exactly that period, the impact of urbanization seems a plausible possibility.”

to repeat, i don’t think ron has convincingly shown what the iqs of italian- and irish-, etc., americans are, so it remains difficult to compare the old and new world iqs for each of these populations. and several commenters (like in this discussion thread) have suggested that the one figure of 87 for the irish in 1972 is just one figure, so perhaps it’s not all that reliable. (the data on which that 87 score is based upon are from a master’s thesis, btw. i found the reference here – opens pdf.)

but let’s say, for the sake of argument, that that figure was correct. ron doesn’t think that this low score could’ve been the result of selective migration because he thinks the immigrants would’ve been from the lowest classes of european society (i.e. presumably those with the lowest iqs):

“Even if we ignore all contemporaneous evidence and argue that 19th century European immigrants to America and elsewhere somehow constituted the IQ elite of their originating countries, the theory of selective migration still remains implausible…. So even if we hypothesize that the Irish, South Italians, Jews, and Greeks who immigrated to America constituted the smartest small slice of their generation — rather than, as seems more likely, often the poorer and most miserable….”

this, however, is an erroneous assumption. from thomas sowell’s Ethnic America: A History (pgs. 22-23):

“Although the cost of a trip to the United States in the hold of a cargo vessel was less than ten pounds sterling (less than fifty dollars at contemporary exchange rates), the poorest of the Irish could not afford even that, so that immigration was very low from the poorest fourth of the Irish population. Those a notch above them on the economic scale emigrated in large numbers, often by selling their belongings, using up savings, and spending money sent by relatives already in America. From one-third to three-quarters of the Irish immigrations to America in the 1830s and 1840s was financed by money sent from North America.”

so, as i said in my previous post, it wasn’t “the poorer and most miserable”, or even “the smartest small slice of their generation” that emigrated from ireland to the u.s. (or britain or australia), but folks in the middle — individuals above “the poorest fourth of the Irish population”. in other words, people of average-ish iqs.

and they left in the millions. for 140-150+ years.

if that wasn’t a dysgenic brain drain, i don’t know what was.

and all that emigration (and famine-related deaths) is reflected in this population graph for the republic of ireland:

the population of the republic of ireland seems to have bottomed out just around the time of lynn’s 87 iq score for the irish in the 1970s. the irish economy improved in fits and starts in the decades after that, and really took off in the heydays of the celtic tiger nineties and noughties (how’d that work out for them anyway?). then there wasn’t any need for anyone with half a brain to leave the country anymore — and there was an additon of something like 1.4 million individuals in two-and-a-half generations (ca. a 35% increase in the population) — and the iq scores started to improve (as ron points out the average iq was measured to be 93 in the early 1990s) — possibly (i’d say likely) as the national average regressed to its natural mean (whatever that might be, presumably higher than 87). (plus the usual flynn effect and possibly effects of better nutrition and other stuff like that.)

that scenario is a strong possibilty anyway, which ron just dismisses based on very shaky evidence.

speaking of dysgenic brain drains, how about southern italy? according to wikipedia (so it must be true!), 80% of immigrants from italy to the u.s. came from southern italy. and look at the iq (pisa) scores there today.

(btw, i don’t think this mass emigration scenario is the whole story re. the low iq scores for the peripheral european countries, but it certainly shouldn’t be discounted as easily as ron has done.)
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ron theorizes that these differences in average iqs have something to do with urban vs. rural living, which is an interesting idea, but he hasn’t made a convincing argument i think. he talks, for instance, about differences in iqs between urban and rural white americans:

“Next, consider the aggregate IQs of rural and urban/suburban whites. During the 1970s according to Wordsum-IQ data, the intelligence gap between whites raised on farms and those who grew up in an urban/suburban background was enormous, almost exactly equal to the white/black gap.”

well, that’s interesting, but again i ask — where are the data? (show me the data! (~_^) )
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finally, ron says:

“Unfortunately, this discussion has been almost entirely restricted to narrow racialist circles, with virtually all non-racialist journalists or pundits maintaining a studious silence on the matter and giving the controversy a very wide berth, although I would argue that issues of race and intelligence have considerable importance in American society.”

i agree! the situation is unfortunate. very unfortunate. i wish everybody would think and talk about human biodiversity all the time! (ok, maybe not all of the time.) i wish it were a regular topic on oprah! (does she even have a show anymore?) i can’t see how we’re gonna solve even half the world’s problems if we don’t — but then i’m beginning to suspect that most people aren’t really interested in that (prolly me, neither). *sigh*

thanks to ron for bringing up the subject at all! (^_^) (although i think there are big holes in his argument. (~_^) )

previously: ron unz and iq and mexican-american iq and a message for ron unz

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