![]() ![]() ![]() Results for annual earnings and family income are similar. Considered alone, AFQT scores explain only about 15 percent of the differences among people’s hourly earnings. Our findings are consistent with past research. But nowhere do the authors use the information in the data set about wages, annual earnings, and incomes to analyze the extent to which the AFQT test scores can explain variations in the key economic out-comes–earnings and income.īecause the authors of The Bell Curve did not use their data to examine how much of the variation in income could be explained by AFQT, we did. They do use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–a comprehensive set of data from a sample of thousands of people aged 27-34 in 1992–to analyze the effect of scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (which Herrnstein and Murray argue is a better measure of IQ than any IQ test) on a wide range of social outcomes, such as illegitimacy, crime, and marital status. The authors of The Bell Curve neither discuss this latter finding nor contradict it with any independent work of their own. Second, differences in IQ alone (as measured by test scores) explain some fraction of the variation in income, but realistic estimates place that fraction at 10 percent or less. The remaining differences arise from unmeasurable factors–personality, looks, networking, perseverance, concern for the future, and just plain luck, to mention only a few. First, measurable differences among individuals–including IQ test scores–can explain only about 30-40 percent of the differences in economic outcomes. On two points these studies agree closely. Many studies, using many different sources of data, have examined the extent to which factors such as education, family background, and IQ can explain differences in people’s wages or family income. Herrnstein and Murray are not the first to ask what determines economic success. There are indeed some useful messages in the book. But the book may have fared even worse had the discussion of race and genetics not distracted attention from some serious problems of analysis and logic in its main arguments. We sympathize with Murray’s frustration over the content and tone of some of the criticism that the book received. society, but on the authors’ application of their theories about IQ to the question of race.Ĭharles Murray complained in the Wall Street Journal last December that the critics’ focus was too narrow. But the bulk of the attention and controversy that swirled around the book focused not on its sweeping vision of what is happening to U.S. ![]() The United States, according to the authors, is rapidly becoming a caste society stratified by IQ, with an underclass mired at the bottom, an elite firmly ensconced at the top, and only a limited scope for public policy to boost the disadvantaged. The book presents a disturbing and highly pessimistic view of trends in American society. Measured by the media attention and controversy it has attracted, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray was the publishing event of the decade. ![]()
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