Cognitive Ability (IQ), Education Quality, Economic Growth, Human Migration: Implications from a Sociobiological Paradigm of Global Economic Inequality

Modernization theories propose that third world developing nations will eventually undergo a transformational process where they will go from traditional agrarian societies to industrialized ones, eventually reaching the development levels of Western, first world nations. It remains to be explained why industrialization has worked for only a small handful of European and Pacific Rim countries and has failed for most other nations of the world in South Asia, the Pacific Islands, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. The 2007 World Bank Report Education Quality and Economic Growth demonstrates that education quality and cognitive skills, measured by international standardized test scores, are stronger predictors for national economic growth than educational quantity, measured by years of schooling and enrollment rates. This paper summarizes key findings of the World Bank report and finds that the intelligence quotient (IQ) is highly correlated with international standardized test scores and other indices that complement income levels as indicators of national well-being. As IQ is substantially heritable, blunt strategies directed at simple resource expansions or institutional changes are unlikely to be effective at reducing disparities in international cognitive skills. Imminent workable solutions geared towards reducing global economic inequalities continue to remain elusive. Implications from the consequences of global inequality are discussed in the context of 21st century human migration in the West and Northeast Asia. Key Words: Cognitive Ability, Education, Economic Growth, IQ, Life Expectancy, Infant Mortality, Intelligence, Human Migration, Immigration, Global Inequality, Eugenics, Northeast Asia, Korea, Japan. At the dawn of the 21st century it has become clear that not all countries in the world are on their way towards sustainable development, modernization, and economic prosperity. In a 2006 World Bank report entitled 06 World Development Indicators,1 the progress of the set of eight millennium development goals laid out in September 2000 in the 8th plenary meeting at the UN Headquarters in New York was reviewed. These goals were the targets that developing countries ought to aim to achieve by 2015: "reduction of poverty and hunger", "educating all children", "empowering women", "saving children", "caring for mothers", "combating disease", "using resources wisely", and "working together". This paper focuses on education and economic growth based on a new 2007 World Bank report that delineates the impact of education quality on economic growth and will therefore review data about the the status of the first two of the eight millennium goals of 2000. Data from the 06 World Development Indicators indicate that sub-Saharan Africa continues to perform way below expectations when it comes to achieving the millennium goal of poverty reduction and hunger. As of 1990, 44.6% of people in sub-Saharan Africa subsisted on less than $1 per day. A projected 38.1% of people will still be subsisting on the same amount per day by the year 2015, falling far behind the 2015 goal of 22.3%. In stark contrast, in East Asia and Pacific Rim in 1990, 29.6% of people subsisted on less than $1 per day, with a projected level dropping to an astoundingly low of 0.7% by 2015. The intended UN goal was to reduce the percentage to 14.8% by 2015. In 1990 in Europe and Central Asia, 0.5% of people subsisted on less than $1 per day. This figure rose to 2.1% shortly after 2000, and is anticipated to decline back to 0.9% by 2015. The millennium goal was set at 0.3% for this region in 2015. The projected trends for other regions including South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa are summarized in figure 1. Of all the above developing regions, only "East Asia and Pacific Rim" has exceeded expectations and has actually surpassed the 2015 goal shortly after 2000. The report proceeds to note that moderate to severe malnutrition rates amongst children under 5 years of age are predicted to fall everywhere in the world, except in subSaharan Africa (data not shown). …