Intelligence and family size: A paradox resolved

Higgins, James V.; Reed, Elizabeth W.; Reed, Sheldon C.

doi:10.1080/19485565.1962.9987508

Cited by 135 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…It probably does this to some extent, but not as much as it increases the frequency of higher IQs, because there is a longer-term consequence of assortative mating which must also be considered. A number of studies have shown that in populations practicing a high degree of assortative mating, persons below IQ 75 are much less successful in finding marriage partners and, as a group, have relatively fewer offspring than do persons of higher intelligence (Bajema, 1963(Bajema, , 1966Higgins, Reed & Reed, 1962). Since assortative mating increases variance, it in effect pushes more people into the below IQ 75 group, where they fail to reproduce, thereby resulting in a net selection for genes favoring high intelligence.…”

Section: The Concept Of Heritabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement

Jensen¹

1969

Harvard Educational Review

2,564

938

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its rationale: the "deprivation hypothesis," according to which academic lag is mainly the result of social, economic, and educational deprivation and discrimination-an hypothesis that has met with wide, uncritical acceptance in the atmosphere of society's growing concern about the plight of minority groups and the economically disadvantaged. The chief goal of compensatory education-to remedy the educational lag of disadvantaged children and thereby narrow the achievement gap between "minority" and "majority" pupils-has been utterly unrealized in any of the large compensatory education programs that have been evaluated so far. On the basis of a nationwide survey and evaluation of compensatory education programs, the United States Commission on Civil Rights (1967) came to the following conclusion: The Commission's analysis does not suggest that compensatory education is incapable of remedying the effects of poverty on the academic achievement of individual children. There is little question that school programs involving expenditures for cultural enrichment, better teaching, and other needed educational services can be helpful to disadvantaged children. The fact remains, however, that none of the programs appear to have raised significantly the achievement of participating pupils, as a group, within the period evaluated by the commission (p. 138). The commission's review gave special attention to compensatory education in majority-Negro schools whose programs "were among the most prominent and included some that have served as models for others." The Commission states: "A principal objective of each was to raise the academic achievement of disadvantaged children. Judged by this standard the programs did not show evidence of much success (p. 138). 1 Why has there been such uniform failure of compensatory programs wherever they have been tried? What has gone wrong? In other fields, when bridges do not stand, when aircraft do not fly, when machines do not work, when treatments do not cure, despite all conscientious efforts on the part of many persons to make them do so, one begins to question the basic assumptions, principles, theories, and hypotheses that guide one's efforts. Is it time to follow suit in education? The theory that has guided most of these compensatory education programs, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, has been two main complementary facets: one might be called the "average children concept," the other the "social deprivation hypothesis." The "average children" concept is essentially the belief that all children, except for a rare few born with severe neurological defects, are basically very much alike in their mental development and capabilities, and that their apparent differences in these characteristics as manifested in school are due to rather superficial differences in children's upbringing at home, their preschool and out-of-school experiences, motivations and interests, and the educational influences of their family background. All children are viewed as basically more or less ho...

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Section: The Concept Of Heritabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement

Jensen¹

1969

Harvard Educational Review

2,564

938

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…This may happen because parents with low IQ's tend to have larger families than high-IQ parents. Lynn [18] and others have posited that such regularities may lead to so-called dysgenic trends (but see [19]). Previously unpublished correlations between the IQ of the conscripts and the size of the sibship (siblings defined as persons with the same mother) across birth cohorts are shown in Figure 2 (the correlation between parental education and sibship size showed similar trends).…”

Section: Family Data and The Fe: Casementioning

confidence: 99%

The Flynn Effect in Families: Studies of Register Data on Norwegian Military Conscripts and Their Families

Sundet

2014

J. Intell.

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In the present paper published data and new analyses are presented and discussed in order to demonstrate the power of family data (siblings and parents to military conscripts with IQ data) in the study of the Flynn effect (FE). In particular, it is shown how studies of the mean intelligence changes in sibships of different sizes and changing proportions of sibship sizes can enhance our understanding how these factors may influence FE. Some new analyses of correlations between intelligence and sibship sizes illustrate how family data can be used to investigate changes in the correlation pattern across generations. It is shown that comparison of the secular trends in the general population and in sibling pairs can be a powerful method in the exploration of the relative influence of between-families and within-families factors in the FE. Surprising connections between the birth order effect on intelligence and the FE are demonstrated.

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“…Higgins, Reed and Reed (1962), in a study of 1,016 families where the IQ of both parents and at least one child were known, found that the negative correlation between intelligence and size of family dis appeared when the parents' non-reproductive siblings were included in the analysis. From this study they claim to have solved the fertility problem, arguing "that while a few of the retarded produce exuber antly large families of children with low average intelligence, most of the retarded produce only one child or no children at all" (Reed and Reed, 1965, p. 79).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Study of Fertility and Mental Deficiency

Åkesson¹

1967

Hum Hered

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Intelligence and family size: A paradox resolved

Cited by 135 publications

References 2 publications

How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement

How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement

The Flynn Effect in Families: Studies of Register Data on Norwegian Military Conscripts and Their Families

A Study of Fertility and Mental Deficiency

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