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IQ and the Wealth of Nations is a controversial 2002 book by Dr. Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, and Dr. Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Tampere, Helsinki, Finland, arguing that differences in national income are largely explained by differences in national intelligence. The book includes the authors' calculation of an average IQ score for each country, based on their analysis of published reports; their argument that national gross domestic product per capita is correlated with IQ; and their conclusion that the IQ differences caused the income differences.

Supporting IQ data

Central to the book's thesis, and perhaps one of its most controversial parts, is a tabulation of what Lynn and Vanhanen believe to be the average IQs of the world's nations. Rather than collect their own IQ data for the book (a potentially massive project), the authors base their results on an examination of existing literature, taking averages when multiple studies give varying results for a country. Thus, some of these figures are based on much more data and larger studies than others. They also adjusted the figures relative to the baseline of UK results, which was taken as 100. When the overall population of the sample countries is taken into account, the mean IQ of the "world" as indicated by these figures is about 90, which is different to the commonly accepted idea that the mean IQ of a population is 100.

It should be noted that there is no consensus that IQ is a valid measurement of intelligence. See the article at IQ for details of this debate, as well as the article Race and intelligence. In particular, note that most individuals in a given country will not have this average IQ, and that it is generally agreed that many factors, including environment, culture, demographics, wealth, pollution, and educational opportunities, affect measured IQ.

One common criticism is that many of the countries with the best average scores are those where testing (e.g. American SATs, baccalaureate examinations) is a crucial aspect of the educational process, and that many of these tests (esp. the SATs) have been shown to be very similar to IQ tests. In these nations, because students study extensively for the high-stakes examinations, it is quite possible that IQ scores are higher because people are subjected to frequent examinations for which they prepare extensively. See Flynn effect.

There are many difficulties when one measuring IQ scores across cultures, and in multiple languages. First of all, use of the same set of exams requires translation, with all its attendant difficulties. To adapt to this, many IQ testers rely on both verbal tests, involving word analogies and the like, and non-verbal tests, which involve pictures, diagrams, and conceptual relationships (such as in-out, big-small, and so on). Roughly the same results tend to be gained with either approach.