African immigrants to the US (not African Americans, recent voluntary immigrants) are currently one of the most impressive model minorities in the US, outperforming both Asian and European immigrants in educational achievement.
Wat. Citation needed. As a racist, that breaks my model. Please explain.
Note that even though the educational achievement goes African immigrant >Asian immigrant > European immigrant > US-born, most of the metrics of financial and economic success go European immigrant > US-born > Asian Immigrant > African Immigrant.
I’ve seen findings to the effect that with each successive generation after the second, non-white immigrants tend to become poorer and less educated, though i don’t remember which group they were looking at. If this interests you enough for me to go find them, let me know.
There are various possible explanations for this...
1) Self-Selection effects cause immigrants to seek education in greater numbers. interpersonal racism distorts market forces (see: various race-resume and job interview studies) to counteract the benefits of higher education. After the 2nd generations any self selection effect dies out and members of non-white racial groups drift economically downward.
I consider [1] to be the strongest hypothesis for the cause of race-related differences in socio-economics regardless of whether or not race-correlated-genetically-based differences in intelligence exist. I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not also genetic differences. Just because racism is sufficient to explain socioeconomic disparity doesn’t mean it’s necessary. Furthermore, we can’t just assume that socioeconomic disparities alone can create the observed trends in behavioral intelligence testing. I don’t think it’s silly to have suspicions that genetic differences exist, but I still feel that it is really silly to be confident that they exist and claim high certainty concerning the magnitude, direction, and nature of these differences when we don’t currently have much general insight into the mechanisms behind genetics and intelligence. It’s even more overconfident to be certain that said supposed genetic differences have large-scale economic consequences. In general, one aught to be suspicious of big ideas with no well-understood mechanisms.
I was going to have a 2) and a 3) alternative hypotheses arguing devils advocate for the race realist side (invoking regression to the mean, affirmative action, etc) as well as a non-race-realist but also non-racism side, but as there appear to be a sufficient number of people who disagree with me present maybe I should just wait for someone who actually holds that opinion to supply those arguments.
I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
If racism is sufficient, then we should not see examples of groups who suffered racism but did not have economic disparities (or had economic disparities which favored them). Are there no such examples?
(I think it’s important to separate out sufficiency- an if-then relationship- and a strong direct effect. It seems likely that the direct effect of racism is to lower economic standing, but to claim sufficiency argues that its direct effect is larger than any other possible combination of total effects.)
The cause of this seems highly separated from the topic of discussion (heritable intelligence) though. I think it is more than obvious that the main cause is selection bias; that is in general why immigrants in general often outperform those who already live there. If you have the drive, determination, and consciousness to be able to go through such a major life change, that itself says something about you. So this filter lets in only those who are talented in this regard.
This model makes the prediction that immigrants from countries that are harder to migrate from will be smarter than those who can migrate more freely. This is seen in the real world: As stated here, African immigrants to the US are currently one of the most impressive model minorities in the US. They beat out, say, Asian immigrants (who also overperform on average.) And Asian immigrants beat out, say, Canadian immigrants, who no one really claims are all that special or particularly distinguished (as migrating from Canada even easier.)
Fascinating. Full marks to the US Human Resources department for their recruitment efforts in this area. The difference in achievement between those various groups of immigrants suggest some powerful selection effects. Simply because that amount of difference in achievement dwarfs the intelligence difference between racial groups no matter which direction that difference goes.
FWIW, your model is really badly broken if you didn’t expect this- I would expect even most racist models (or, at least, my Turing-test-passing attempts at racist models) to predict this.
FWIW, your model is really badly broken if you didn’t expect this- I would expect even most racist models (or, at least, my Turing-test-passing attempts at racist models) to predict this.
Why are you so confident that even most racist models would predict this? Prior to acquiring domain specific knowledge about trends or immigration policies in the United States it doesn’t seem especially likely. Until Randaly provided the relevant link I knew next to nothing about the particulars of which racial groups successfully immigrate to the US at which education level. In the absence of such information it seems reasonable to guess that the patterns would tend toward following the trends for IQ among the groups as well as correlating with the distribution of educational qualifications for individuals in the respective countries. ie. I’d guess that East Asian groups would have more educational achievement than African groups.
I’d call the model possessed by myself of the recent past wrong and also ignorant of that and related pieces of trivia but I’d hardly call it “really badly broken”. Perhaps you consider this and related information far more important or fundamental than I do?
I am Randaly; I didn’t know that specific information before, but it did not surprise me. My understanding was that phenomenon of brain drain is fairly well known.
I don’t usually refer to brain drain in my understanding of things. If this is true, I should. But why expect differential brain drain between Africa and Asia, which is what is necessary to explain this.
But why expect differential brain drain between Africa and Asia
Here is a throwaway guess: because Asia is rapidly developing and Africa is not. If you’re very smart and in (ex-Japan) Asia, you can stay and be successful (make millions / cure cancer / become a pop star / etc.) locally. It’s a fluid growing environment. But if you’re in Africa, your chances of local success are much smaller and, correspondingly, your incentives to emigrate are much higher.
I endorse Lumifer’s reason. Other reasons would include less patriotism (as I understand, loyalties in much of Africa are to tribes/clans/families rather than a nationstate, religion, or ideology, so bringing your family abroad of going abroad to look for money would be less of a shift) and less perceived safety (e.g. apparently 75% of Ethiopia’s skilled laborers moved abroad during its famines).
I am Randaly; I didn’t know that specific information before, but it did not surprise me. My understanding was that phenomenon of brain drain is fairly well known.
Brain drain is familiar to me… it’s even what I attribute most of the success of the US to, especially when it comes to silicone valley. What I had no information about (and little need to collect information about) was the specific details of which countries the US attracts and permits immigrants from most freely. Without those details knowledge of brain drain is irrelevant, it doesn’t distinguish between drain-sources.
Really? A racist model take the base IQ of africans, compares it to that of eurasions, notices that the latter is ~2 std devs higher, and predicts superior achievement by eurasions. You would only expect such over-achievement if Asian immigrants were average folks and African immigrants were the cream of the intellectual class, but why would I predict that, a priori?
Because the Nigerian “middle class” makes on average about $6,000 a year while the Japanese middle class on average makes $52,000 a year? The average African might very well want to come to the US, but only the very wealthiest (and since g correlates strongly with wealth, brightest) actually can.
In the last half century, as Subsaharan Africa’s population has skyrocketed to nearly a billion people, we’ve had about 900,000 African immigrants come to the US and those immigrants have shown exceptional talent; both are entirely consistent with the numbers we’d expect if we’re taking people with an average IQ of 115-120 (AKA, at or above the Ashkenazi Jewish mean).
Edit: Also, racist is a fairly charged (if hardly inaccurate) word and absolutely adds more heat than light, to use that delightful turn of phrase. Sticking with the generally-preferred term “Racial Realist” or even the milder British epithet “Racialist” might help reduce the reflexive opposition that tends to crop up in these discussions.
Consistent given the base IQ assumptions if the majority of all the most intellectually outstanding Africans are emigrating and coming to America specifically.
(America is not the most common destination for African immigrants, a majority of them go to Europe.)
The numbers are only weird if we assume they all came this year; remember, we’re talking about a period of more than five decades here.
Edit: Also, Continental Europe and the Anglosphere have two entirely disparate experiences with African Immigration these days. It’s hardly fair to focus on the small numbers legal immigrants to the vast numbers of illegal ones given Europe’s current position. It would be like saying that America’s Latin American population was predominantly middle-class or wealthy republicans; from a legal standpoint it’s arguable, but the demographics favor the illegal immigrants.
I’d add that sticking to the term “race realist” is unlikely to moderate responses here, since the majority of Less Wrong is already quite familiar with “race realism,” and speaking for myself at least, that sort of self-promoting name scheme, in the vein of pro-life or pro-choice (implying that those who hold it are the realists and those who do not are thus in some way deluded) serves only to move it from the realms of the empirical into the political.
Edit: If we’re looking at legal immigration to America alone, we were up to about 85,000 a year eight years ago, with trends moving upwards at that point (I haven’t found any more recent data yet,) and while a majority of immigration to America is legal, America doesn’t get a majority of the legal immigration.
That does bring the levels to statistical consistency assuming a sufficiently high level of retreat from Africa among the intellectual elite, but the more of the top people in Africa who leave, the less competition those who stay are going to face. It becomes a choice, not between being middle class in Africa or middle class in America, but between being the top of the heap in Africa versus middle class in America.
I think you missed my edit, so just a restatement; comparing modern illegal immigrants to Europe with legal immigration is not a useful comparison, as it’s apples to oranges in terms of demography.
Okay, but I hope you don’t mind if I respond to it here for coherency’s sake.
the more of the top people in Africa who leave, the less competition those who stay are going to face. It becomes a choice, not between being middle class in Africa or middle class in America, but between being the top of the heap in Africa versus middle class in America.
Don’t forget a lot of African immigrants are here mid-term or have a dual citizenship; they come here to get educated and make enough money to set themselves up back home and become millionaires, then bring the kids back to the US for round two. I know a sweet Nigerian girl who came here for exactly that purpose, since a doctor with an American MD can run their own hospital in Africa.
But yes, in any remotely stable country there should be an equilibrium point where permanent immigration lets off entirely. That’s a perfectly reasonable observation.
Wat. Citation needed. As a racist, that breaks my model. Please explain.
(La Wik says brain drain)
Here is one source which lays them out cleanly. Click on the first table.
http://www.asian-nation.org/immigrant-stats.shtml
Note that even though the educational achievement goes African immigrant >Asian immigrant > European immigrant > US-born, most of the metrics of financial and economic success go European immigrant > US-born > Asian Immigrant > African Immigrant.
I’ve seen findings to the effect that with each successive generation after the second, non-white immigrants tend to become poorer and less educated, though i don’t remember which group they were looking at. If this interests you enough for me to go find them, let me know.
There are various possible explanations for this...
1) Self-Selection effects cause immigrants to seek education in greater numbers. interpersonal racism distorts market forces (see: various race-resume and job interview studies) to counteract the benefits of higher education. After the 2nd generations any self selection effect dies out and members of non-white racial groups drift economically downward.
I consider [1] to be the strongest hypothesis for the cause of race-related differences in socio-economics regardless of whether or not race-correlated-genetically-based differences in intelligence exist. I think there is plenty of evidence that racism is sufficient to create economic disparities—the mechanism is parsimonious and the steps are well-supported.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there are not also genetic differences. Just because racism is sufficient to explain socioeconomic disparity doesn’t mean it’s necessary. Furthermore, we can’t just assume that socioeconomic disparities alone can create the observed trends in behavioral intelligence testing. I don’t think it’s silly to have suspicions that genetic differences exist, but I still feel that it is really silly to be confident that they exist and claim high certainty concerning the magnitude, direction, and nature of these differences when we don’t currently have much general insight into the mechanisms behind genetics and intelligence. It’s even more overconfident to be certain that said supposed genetic differences have large-scale economic consequences. In general, one aught to be suspicious of big ideas with no well-understood mechanisms.
I was going to have a 2) and a 3) alternative hypotheses arguing devils advocate for the race realist side (invoking regression to the mean, affirmative action, etc) as well as a non-race-realist but also non-racism side, but as there appear to be a sufficient number of people who disagree with me present maybe I should just wait for someone who actually holds that opinion to supply those arguments.
If racism is sufficient, then we should not see examples of groups who suffered racism but did not have economic disparities (or had economic disparities which favored them). Are there no such examples?
(I think it’s important to separate out sufficiency- an if-then relationship- and a strong direct effect. It seems likely that the direct effect of racism is to lower economic standing, but to claim sufficiency argues that its direct effect is larger than any other possible combination of total effects.)
Very well.
Racism is sufficient to lower SES, but if other factors are involved it may be insufficient to induce a negative disparity.
The cause of this seems highly separated from the topic of discussion (heritable intelligence) though. I think it is more than obvious that the main cause is selection bias; that is in general why immigrants in general often outperform those who already live there. If you have the drive, determination, and consciousness to be able to go through such a major life change, that itself says something about you. So this filter lets in only those who are talented in this regard.
This model makes the prediction that immigrants from countries that are harder to migrate from will be smarter than those who can migrate more freely. This is seen in the real world: As stated here, African immigrants to the US are currently one of the most impressive model minorities in the US. They beat out, say, Asian immigrants (who also overperform on average.) And Asian immigrants beat out, say, Canadian immigrants, who no one really claims are all that special or particularly distinguished (as migrating from Canada even easier.)
See here.
Fascinating. Full marks to the US Human Resources department for their recruitment efforts in this area. The difference in achievement between those various groups of immigrants suggest some powerful selection effects. Simply because that amount of difference in achievement dwarfs the intelligence difference between racial groups no matter which direction that difference goes.
FWIW, your model is really badly broken if you didn’t expect this- I would expect even most racist models (or, at least, my Turing-test-passing attempts at racist models) to predict this.
Are you sure you could have correctly predicted beforehand whether African immigrants would outperform other immigrants?
Why are you so confident that even most racist models would predict this? Prior to acquiring domain specific knowledge about trends or immigration policies in the United States it doesn’t seem especially likely. Until Randaly provided the relevant link I knew next to nothing about the particulars of which racial groups successfully immigrate to the US at which education level. In the absence of such information it seems reasonable to guess that the patterns would tend toward following the trends for IQ among the groups as well as correlating with the distribution of educational qualifications for individuals in the respective countries. ie. I’d guess that East Asian groups would have more educational achievement than African groups.
I’d call the model possessed by myself of the recent past wrong and also ignorant of that and related pieces of trivia but I’d hardly call it “really badly broken”. Perhaps you consider this and related information far more important or fundamental than I do?
I am Randaly; I didn’t know that specific information before, but it did not surprise me. My understanding was that phenomenon of brain drain is fairly well known.
I don’t usually refer to brain drain in my understanding of things. If this is true, I should. But why expect differential brain drain between Africa and Asia, which is what is necessary to explain this.
Here is a throwaway guess: because Asia is rapidly developing and Africa is not. If you’re very smart and in (ex-Japan) Asia, you can stay and be successful (make millions / cure cancer / become a pop star / etc.) locally. It’s a fluid growing environment. But if you’re in Africa, your chances of local success are much smaller and, correspondingly, your incentives to emigrate are much higher.
I endorse Lumifer’s reason. Other reasons would include less patriotism (as I understand, loyalties in much of Africa are to tribes/clans/families rather than a nationstate, religion, or ideology, so bringing your family abroad of going abroad to look for money would be less of a shift) and less perceived safety (e.g. apparently 75% of Ethiopia’s skilled laborers moved abroad during its famines).
Brain drain is familiar to me… it’s even what I attribute most of the success of the US to, especially when it comes to silicone valley. What I had no information about (and little need to collect information about) was the specific details of which countries the US attracts and permits immigrants from most freely. Without those details knowledge of brain drain is irrelevant, it doesn’t distinguish between drain-sources.
Really? A racist model take the base IQ of africans, compares it to that of eurasions, notices that the latter is ~2 std devs higher, and predicts superior achievement by eurasions. You would only expect such over-achievement if Asian immigrants were average folks and African immigrants were the cream of the intellectual class, but why would I predict that, a priori?
Because the Nigerian “middle class” makes on average about $6,000 a year while the Japanese middle class on average makes $52,000 a year? The average African might very well want to come to the US, but only the very wealthiest (and since g correlates strongly with wealth, brightest) actually can.
In the last half century, as Subsaharan Africa’s population has skyrocketed to nearly a billion people, we’ve had about 900,000 African immigrants come to the US and those immigrants have shown exceptional talent; both are entirely consistent with the numbers we’d expect if we’re taking people with an average IQ of 115-120 (AKA, at or above the Ashkenazi Jewish mean).
Edit: Also, racist is a fairly charged (if hardly inaccurate) word and absolutely adds more heat than light, to use that delightful turn of phrase. Sticking with the generally-preferred term “Racial Realist” or even the milder British epithet “Racialist” might help reduce the reflexive opposition that tends to crop up in these discussions.
Consistent given the base IQ assumptions if the majority of all the most intellectually outstanding Africans are emigrating and coming to America specifically.
(America is not the most common destination for African immigrants, a majority of them go to Europe.)
The numbers are only weird if we assume they all came this year; remember, we’re talking about a period of more than five decades here.
Edit: Also, Continental Europe and the Anglosphere have two entirely disparate experiences with African Immigration these days. It’s hardly fair to focus on the small numbers legal immigrants to the vast numbers of illegal ones given Europe’s current position. It would be like saying that America’s Latin American population was predominantly middle-class or wealthy republicans; from a legal standpoint it’s arguable, but the demographics favor the illegal immigrants.
However, about half that number actually does emigrate from Africa on a yearly basis.
I’d add that sticking to the term “race realist” is unlikely to moderate responses here, since the majority of Less Wrong is already quite familiar with “race realism,” and speaking for myself at least, that sort of self-promoting name scheme, in the vein of pro-life or pro-choice (implying that those who hold it are the realists and those who do not are thus in some way deluded) serves only to move it from the realms of the empirical into the political.
Edit: If we’re looking at legal immigration to America alone, we were up to about 85,000 a year eight years ago, with trends moving upwards at that point (I haven’t found any more recent data yet,) and while a majority of immigration to America is legal, America doesn’t get a majority of the legal immigration.
That does bring the levels to statistical consistency assuming a sufficiently high level of retreat from Africa among the intellectual elite, but the more of the top people in Africa who leave, the less competition those who stay are going to face. It becomes a choice, not between being middle class in Africa or middle class in America, but between being the top of the heap in Africa versus middle class in America.
I think you missed my edit, so just a restatement; comparing modern illegal immigrants to Europe with legal immigration is not a useful comparison, as it’s apples to oranges in terms of demography.
Your edit came after I wrote up my comment, but I did read it, and edited my own comment in response.
Okay, but I hope you don’t mind if I respond to it here for coherency’s sake.
Don’t forget a lot of African immigrants are here mid-term or have a dual citizenship; they come here to get educated and make enough money to set themselves up back home and become millionaires, then bring the kids back to the US for round two. I know a sweet Nigerian girl who came here for exactly that purpose, since a doctor with an American MD can run their own hospital in Africa.
But yes, in any remotely stable country there should be an equilibrium point where permanent immigration lets off entirely. That’s a perfectly reasonable observation.