Race and Intelligence Asian Americans I ve noticed you ve contributed much to the race intelligence articles and thought these articles might interest you Using data from recent Current Population Surveys CPS this study compares third and higher generation with earlier generation Asian Americans and non Hispanic whites in terms of socioeconomic characteristics and demographics The findings suggest a third generation decline or flattening for Asian American and white men as well as Asian American and white women For each of these groups the mean of years of schooling among the 2 5 and third generations is lower than among the first and second generations This pattern is most pronounced among Asian Americans As for wage determination the generational differentials can be explained by educational attainment and other basic demographic variables Overall these results suggest that assimilation beyond the first generation immigrants no longer improves socioeconomic attainments as expected by traditional assimilation theory Furthermore in the case of Asian Americans cultural assimilation across the generations may actually lower educational attainment and thereby reduce wages contrary to traditional assimilation theory It is widely noted that Asian immigrant parents have higher educational and socioeconomic expectations and motivations for their children than do non Hispanic white parents e g Goyette and Xie 1999 Kao 1995 2004 Asian families also tend to invest more aggressively in financial human and within family social capital than families from other racial groups e g Sun 1998 Yet protective effects of ethnic cultures and resources decline according to more acculturation into the mainstream U S society e g Kao and Tienda 1995 As third or higher generation Asians become more Americanized they tend to embrace the prevailing U S norm that as long as good efforts have been made based on one s ability the outcome would be acceptable even though one has not achieved the best performance or reached a higher level of education Chen and Stevenson 1989 Stevenson 1988 Likewise Shinagawa pointed out another interesting phenomenon later generation second third fourth etc Asian Americans on average have markedly lower education and income compared to immigrant Asians In 2007 33 percent of PhDs conferred in the U S were to Asians However of that 33 percent only 2 percent were Asians Americans born or raised in the U S These trends are reflected in their TIMSS PIRLS scores which are often used by people like Charles Murray and Richard Lynn as proxies for IQ Note that native born Asian Americans perform worse than native born Whites in every subject My goal here is not to put down Asian Americans but I ve noticed that lots of modern racialists like to use Asians as a battering ram against other minorities Yet as the above evidence indicates even model minorities who start from a much more advantageous position than the others can still succumb to negative cultural influences which significantly hurt their academic performance This suggests that culture does indeed matter greatly even on exams like the TIMSS which supposedly test for g If you have any contacts with academics in the field perhaps you d like to pass this information along James Flynn who wrote an entire book on Asian Americans might be particularly interested