Australian urban anthropologist and ethologist Frank Salter wrote:
Evolutionary theories of Aboriginal disability are rejected outright by an Australian social science still crippled by the culture wars of the last century. Not so in medical science. Dr Alan Barclay of the Australian Diabetes Council attributes the early onset of diabetes in Aborigines to an evolutionary history that did not include agriculture.[42] John Boulton, a medical researcher specialising in Aboriginal paediatrics, believes that we need to draw on evolutionary biology to better understand and treat the health disaster that has afflicted outback Aboriginal communities for generations.[43] The proximate causes include poor nourishment of children as well as fetal undernourishment, itself due to mothers consuming alcohol while pregnant, domestic violence and stress. Despite massive medical interventions, twice the proportion of Aboriginal babies are born underweight than non-indigenous babies. This and other factors have cascading impacts on health, leading to babies that fail to thrive who become adults with high rates of kidney failure and diabetes. Boulton attributes a role to epigenetics, in which early stresses are carried to the next generation by alterations in gene expression. Rat experiments indicate that five generations are needed to overcome accumulated epigenetic effects. Other research directed by Jim Penman, a Melbourne historian, implicates epigenetics in cycles of work behaviour and child rearing over the last four millennia. Penman reports rat experiments indicating that epigenetics can affect alcohol consumption.[44]
Work and social behaviour may also have been selected by millennia of agriculture. Farming, especially in societies governed by rule-of-law, appears to select for behaviour promoting goal-directed work and weeds out violent temperaments.[45]
One egregious omission in the Report is IQ, which is the single strongest predictor of educational outcomes and is associated with many social and biological indicators. Australian Aborigines have relatively low IQs by international comparison. Cognitive psychologist Richard Lynn estimates the average IQ of mixed-race Aborigines to be 80 compared with an Australian average of 98.[46] IQ is certainly an innate feature in the sense of being partly inherited. Twin studies indicate that about 75 per cent of the variance in IQ is due to genetic factors. A new technique for measuring heritability, developed with the help of Australian scientists, confirms that estimate, ending a half-century of disputation about heritability of IQ. The new method—called “genome-wide complex trait analysis”—is based not on twins but on hundreds of thousands of DNA markers assayed from unrelated individuals. It yields a heritability of 73 per cent.[47]
IQ is one factor underlying the extraordinary and persistent gulf between white and Aboriginal standards of living. Noel Pearson tries to convey the magnitude of that gulf: “It is as if there is a Third World country in the middle of the First, one showing few signs of development.”[48] The situation is worse than that, despite costly assistance programs.[49] Before China embraced capitalism its people were the largest Third World society in the world. Most lived in rural villages subsisting on medieval agriculture. Levels of alcoholism, child abuse and family breakdown were low. The villagers maintained a hard work routine. Economic development was impeded by communist rule despite the population having one of the highest IQs in the world. The proof? When Chinese people emigrate to free societies they flourish in education, business and the professions. Mainland China is rapidly assimilating science, technology and industry at the most sophisticated levels.
The importance of understanding racial differences is illustrated by considering the OECD target of having 40 per cent of young people graduate from university. This benchmark is set by states most of which have high average IQs by global standards. To achieve this for white Australians it will be necessary to set the entrance threshold at the equivalent of an average IQ of about 102.[50] This is a bit low for university studies, according to the American educational psychologist Linda Gottfredson. From this perspective, if policy-makers insist on the 40 per cent target it is likely to result in universities lowering their standards to prevent excessive rates of failure.[51] The situation is worse for Aborigines. For a population with an average IQ of 80 only 7 per cent exceed the 102 IQ threshold. For this population the top 40 per cent of IQs fall above an IQ of 84. Reducing entry standards to this level would still not produce equality of outcomes, because over 80 per cent of whites would then qualify for entry. And of course the situation would not be improved by raising entrance standards, as advocated by some commentators. If the effective entrance IQ to universities were raised to 110, then about 25 per cent of whites would qualify compared to 2.3 per cent of Aborigines.
Australia is not alone in showing poor educational and socioeconomic outcomes for its indigenous peoples. White New Zealand students are near the top of OECD educational measures while Maori students rank 28th. Half of Maori students fail to complete high school, compared to one quarter of Anglo and 13 per cent of Chinese New Zealanders.[52] Many factors are involved but the substantial IQ gap, though only half that in Australia, is in the same direction.[53] Maoris suffer many of the same disabilities as Aborigines, though less severely, including a high imprisonment rate, more health problems, more abuse of alcohol and drugs, a shorter life expectancy and greater domestic violence. Contrary to the Expert Panel’s expectation for Australian Aborigines, Maoris suffer these disabilities despite having been granted the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and gaining special parliamentary representation as early as 1867. It is therefore puzzling that the New Zealand example prompted the Expert Panel’s sympathy for a treaty given that alleviating Aboriginal disability is a main goal. There is no evidence that a treaty, or agreement-making power in the Constitution, or parliamentary representation, would have an appreciable effect on indigenous health, imprisonment rates or employment.[54]
IQ alone explains more than half the variation in per capita GDP around the world, a monumental discovery resulting from the collaboration of Richard Lynn and Finnish sociologist Tatu Vanhanen in 2002. [55] Its significance to international relations and the economics of development is compounded by the fact that IQ also correlates with invidious social indicators: unemployment, divorce, children born to single mothers, poverty, incarceration, chronic welfare, and dropping out of school. To these can be added poor health and reduced support by families and communities. Note that these outcomes are not foretold; there are other causes, resulting in substantial variation. Community culture and access to services can make a big difference.
The clustering of behavioural and social indicators is well known among cognitive psychologists. “Intelligence in childhood, as measured by psychometric cognitive tests, is a strong predictor of many important life outcomes, including educational attainment, income, health and lifespan.”[56] According to “life history theory”, also mainstream in evolutionary psychology, this clustering is due to reproductive strategies that were selected over many generations.[57] The constellation of traits around intelligence, what the late psychologist Arthur Jensen called the “g nexus”, has been confirmed many times over decades of research.[58]
