An article in The Economist caught my attention recently; it was entitled “How to raise world IQ”. The article was based on research in 72 countries that found that the average IQ rose by 2.2 points a decade between 1948 and 2020. The researchers were baffled by these results. They wondered how the brain could improve so rapidly over just a few decades when it had taken millions of years to evolve.
Their conclusion was that people were becoming much better nourished, and mentally stimulated, than in previous times. They theorized that, just like muscles, the brain needs the right nutrients and activity to develop.
That research would possibly indicate that increasing the world’s IQ is a goal that could be realized even with current knowledge and resources, if there is a willingness to do so. The world grows enough food, and education can provide the brain with the stimulus activity it needs. The issue, therefore, is implementation not resources, if you want to improve the world’s IQ.
Twenty-two percent (22%) of under-five children, globally, are malnourished enough to inhibit brain development, and to stunt it permanently. The World Bank estimates that solving this problem would cost a mere $12 billion a year, WHICH IS SLIGHTLY MORE THAN 1/3 OF WHAT THE U.S. WASTES ON FARM SUBSIDIES. Education to raise brain stimulation is more problematic because it takes longer to implement. It is also subject to politics, religion, and social morays that often get in the way – religious and social restrictions on women’s education in many countries is only one example.
So, distribution is a major problem for both food and education. It can be fixed, in terms of resources, so the question then becomes “how”, what are the consequences of fixing it, and is it a good idea if you take those consequences into account.
The world’s biggest problem, currently, is a rapidly growing population. Better nutrition and health care have contributed significantly to this problem. I have long thought that all foreign aid, for example, should be tied to family planning, but that is a political “hot potato”. Kenya is a great example: Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s first president after independence, played the western world, and their resources, well during his tenure. The result was a better economy, better health care, and more babies that lived. Unfortunately, no-one thought of combining family planning with that improved healthcare and nutrition. Women continued to have 10-12 children on the assumption that only 2-3 would live into adulthood. After the improvements, 7-9 lived, and the population exploded, pushing the economy back to where it started.
The world used to have regular plagues and other pandemics, plus wars costing incredible numbers of lives, to control the world’s population, but scientific advances have curtailed the former, and diplomacy and communication have restricted the latter. We can’t rely on those traditional events to curtail population growth any longer. One possible solution, if we don’t self-regulate in time, might be controlled culling, and that is abhorrent.
Given all of this, increasing worldwide nutrition and education to improve IQ may sound like a great and positive idea but, maybe, it’s not, unless the consequences of such increases are taken into account and incorporated in all planning.
Another issue is politics. No politician in their right mind wants a better educated electorate except, perhaps, in theory. An educated electorate means it might question what the politicians are doing and saying, and what potential potentate wants that.
Yes, the human mind is a terrible thing to waste but the implementation of policies to foster its growth are fraught with obstacles and problems that are mainly ignored. Wonderful though it might sound, increasing the world’s IQ might not be such a good idea after all.
