Book review: Global Inequality as a Consequence of Human Diversity: A New Theory Tested by Empirical Evidence

Global Inequality as a Consequence of Human Diversity: A New Theory Tested by Empirical Evidence Tatu Vanhanen Ulster Institute for Social Research 2014, 171 pages.Why are some nations so much wealthier than others? And why has the difference between the wealth of nations continued to grow until recently despite international aid and other attempts to redistribute wealth? The standard answer among social scientists is that the difference is a result of the exploitation of poorer countries by richer countries or a lack of particular kinds of natural resources, or particular kinds of history or culture, in poorer countries.This book's thesis is as bold as it is controversial: As with any animal, humans evolved into sub-species which vary in intelligence due to differing environmental selection pressures for this characteristic. Even within these sub-species there is genetic variance in intelligence. Intelligence strongly correlates with numerous measures of individual and national success and especially those that measure standard of living. As such, there will always be 'inequality.' It is a biological fact of human existence.In Global Inequality, Vanhanen examines the relationship of six measures of national living standard - GNI per capita, tertiary education, infant mortality, life expectancy, sanitation, and democratization - with average IQ in 178 countries. His conclusion is that around 75% of global variation between nations in these measures is explained by national differences in average intelligence. In discussing his results, Vanhanen looks at each of the nations whose relationship is an outlier on each measure and explains why this is the case. He also defends Richard Lynn's national IQs from the often unreasonable and tendentious criticisms that have been leveled against them.Quite apart from its carefully-argued thesis, Global Inequality has a number of points to recommend it. Often, books written by scientists who propose biological and more specifically genetic theories as explanations for social phenomena tend to summarily dismiss or even ignore the environmentallydeterminist theories which are, often for ideological reasons, advocated by scholars in the social sciences and humanities. This permits humanities scholars to argue that the scientist is 'reductionist' or not familiar with the relevant literature, allowing them to dismiss his scientific work with their own theories. In this regard, Vanhanen's patience is extremely useful. He spends considerable time looking at every significant environmentally-determinist explanation for global inequality, showing that they are question-begging, partial explanations, or do not accord with the available evidence.In fact, in that the book is relatively short, I would have liked to have seen it go much further in this regard; defending the utility of the concept of intelligence and even philosophically or morally justifying studying population differences at all. These avenues tend to be those down which ideologically-driven scholars turn in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence which proves that they are wrong. They may also attempt to argue that concepts such as 'intelligence' or even the desire to have wealth or education are 'very Western.' Accordingly, it would be useful to note the obvious problem with this argument: People everywhere value these things or proxies for them such as access to resources, wisdom or common sense. …