Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Flynn Effect among Mexican Americans: Using General Social Survey data, I calculated the mean IQs for each of the past four decades for people of Mexican ancestry who were born in the United States. Here are the numbers:


Mean IQ

70s 85.2
80s 84.4
90s 91.8
00s 95.1

The 1990s saw more than a 7 point increase over the previous decade, and the gains continued into the 21st century. Let's compare them to white Americans:


Mean IQ

70s 99.1
80s 99.2
90s 100.5
00s 101.3

I'm not sure why increases are seen for the groups--the white gain might be explained, in part, by increases in mean age (vocabularies expand a bit with age)--but higher IQs indicate that people will thrive, so this is a good sign for Mexican Americans. (Keep in mind that the analysis concerns people born here, so immigrants, legal and illegal, are excluded.)

3 comments:

RKU said...

These Mexican-American numbers are *extremely* interesting, and I've never seen them discussed anywhere else.

Is there any way you could produce similar time-series implied IQ scores for other American-born demographic groups, Latino or otherwise, making it easier to decide how plausible these results are?

Also, does the GSS have immigrant Mexican-American numbers as well. It would be interesting to compare these.

Ron Guhname said...

rku: Sure, I'll show other groups. And yes, I'll generate numbers for immigrants Mex-Ams, but keep in mind that this is a vocab. test, so comparisons across time might be valid, but not comparisons with native-born people.

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