Latinos (average IQ of 90 in America) are already performing as well as can be expected given their human capital. We should not expect them to do much better than they already do in the United States. They will be the underclass (along with blacks, who have an average IQ of 85) for many generations to come, sucking in far more in government services than they provide in tax. With every Latino immigrant, on average, America’s average IQ dips and the country becomes more like Brazil and Mexico with every passing day, more like the 2006 movie Idiocracy.
So when Michael Milken pitches Latinos as this great untapped resource, he does not know what he’s talking about.
* The biggest gaps are all in West Africa. Not only is the region grindingly poor, but it also has perhaps the world’s most acute parasitic disease load, thanks to the hot, humid equatorial climate and low-lying, swampy geography (which the region’s disorganized and resource-pool governments are unable to mitigate) .
* Latin America is already pretty much “where it should be” in terms of prosperity as implied by its level of human capital.
* Countries with an average IQ of ~95 include Romania, Greece, Turkey, and Israel (!). If the South Asian continent could successfully resolve its malnutrition, parasitic disease load, and inbreeding issues – admittedly, no small challenge – then it could well expect to eventually rise close to southern European living standards.
* Vietnam: Phenotypic IQ of 99, versus a genotypic IQ of 106. Certainly a major surprise, considering it is even higher than China.
* …Asian-Americans scored ~107 in PISA 2009, and Asian-Americans in the US include relatively lower IQ Thais, Filipinos, etc. If we set that as the genotypic IQ of the Han people, then there is still very substantial room for further improvement (with the consequence that the Flynn Effect really does apply very much to East Asians too).
Regardless, short of them embarking on some new Maoist adventure, or getting flooded off the world map by runaway global warming, or getting nuked, or some other similarly apocalyptic scenario, China’s and Vietnam’s convergence to at least Japan’s level is all but certain in the long run.
