Race and intelligence

Steven Levitt has never had a problem studying issues that make people squirm and I am not just referring to his abortion study, his study on the impact of names is equally, if not more discomforting. It was there that he concluded:

The data show that, on average, a person with a distinctively black name—whether it is a woman named Imani or a man named DeShawn—does have a worse life outcome than a woman named Molly or a man named Jake. But it isn't the fault of his or her name. If two black boys, Jake Williams and DeShawn Williams, are born in the same neighborhood and into the same familial and economic circumstances, they would likely have similar life outcomes. But the kind of parents who name their son Jake don't tend to live in the same neighborhoods or share economic circumstances with the kind of parents who name their son DeShawn. And that's why, on average, a boy named Jake will tend to earn more money and get more education than a boy named DeShawn. DeShawn's name is an indicator—but not a cause—of his life path.

Regardless, he is now looking at race and intelligence and trying to find whether one has much of any impact on the other. He explains what much research has found up until now:

...research has consistently found that Black teenagers underperform White teenagers by an average of about one standard deviation on tests of IQ and academic achievement. Substantial racial test score gaps are found as early as age five.

A full standard deviation is an enormous gap, but a new paper that he co-wrote is not only reporting that blacks and whites score about the same, but also that if any race does the worst, it is Asians (the race that has historically always out performed the competition):

Using a newly available nationally representative data set that includes a test of mental function for children aged eight to twelve months, we find only minor racial differences in test outcomes (0.06 standard deviation units in the raw data) between Blacks and Whites that disappear with the inclusion of a limited set of controls. The only statistically significant racial difference is that Asian children score slightly worse than those of other races. To the extent that there are any genetically-driven racial differences in intelligence, these gaps must either emerge after the age of one, or operate along dimensions not captured by this early test of mental cognition.

Studies like this only reaffirm my decision to become an economics major (especially after taking my economics final this morning!).

-Mr. Alec