Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Regional differences in intelligence?   posted by Razib @ 7/15/2008 10:32:00 PM
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In the post below, Colder climates favor civilization even among Whites alone, I made a few comments about possible differences between Germans in Illinois and Germans in Texas, based on nothing much more than a hunch. I trust my hunches, but there's no reason you should, so I decided to see if there was anything here in regards to my assumption about interregional differences in intelligence and how they might track across ethnic groups. So of course I went to the GSS website, and checked the mean WORDSUM scores of various white ethnic groups broken down by region. I specifically focused on whites who stated that their ancestors were from England & Wales, Germany and Ireland. My reasoning is that these are three groups with very large N's within the GSS sample and they are well represented across the regions in absolute numbers. My main motivation was see if the differences across regions were similar for all three groups. Here are the states for each region (the Census made up these categories):

New England - Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut
Middle Atlantic - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
East North Central - Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin
West North Central - Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas
South Atlantic - Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida
East South Central - Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi
West South Central - Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
Mountain - Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada
Pacific - Washington, Imbler, California, Alaska, Hawaii

Obviously the breakdown isn't ideal. I think Delaware and Maryland arguably should be Mid-Atlantic. I also believe that Wisconsin is more plausibly in the West North Central than Missouri or Kansas is. But those are the regional breakdowns and I can't do anything about them.

So, WORDSUM is a vocabulary test on a 0-10 scale. For the whole GSS sample the mean was 6.00, with 1 standard deviation being 2.16. Below is a chart which shows the relationship between WORDSUM scores (Y axis) for various regions (X axis) for each of the three ethnic groups:





The tables below are pretty self-explanatory. At the top you see the mean WORDSUM scores for each ethnic group for each region. I put the N's in there as well so you can see that the sample sizes were pretty big. Note that there is more interregional variation within an ethnic group than there is interethnic variation within a region (the standard deviation across the columns is 50% bigger than across the rows). Just to be clear, I also included some tables which show the differences in WORDSUM mean scores between the regions like so: (row - column) = value.




New England

Middle Atlantic

East North Central

West North Central

South Atlantic

East South Central

West South Central

Mountain

Pacific

N

England & Wales

7.4

7.09

6.71

6.65

6.66

6.2

6.87

6.84

7.1

2,462

Germany

7.7

6.31

6.01

6.33

6.16

5.83

6.2

6.37

6.36

3,316

Ireland

6.98

7.07

6.15

6.46

6.06

5.66

6.03

6.51

6.88

2,207












England & Wales












New England

Middle Atlantic

East North Central

West North Central

South Atlantic

East South Central

West South Central

Mountain

Pacific


New England

-

0.31

0.69

0.75

0.74

1.2

0.53

0.56

0.3


Middle Atlantic

-

-

0.38

0.44

0.43

0.89

0.22

0.25

-0.01


East North Central

-

-

-

0.06

0.05

0.51

-0.16

-0.13

-0.39


West North Central

-

-

-

-

-0.01

0.45

-0.22

-0.19

-0.45


South Atlantic

-

-

-

-

-

0.46

-0.21

-0.18

-0.44


East South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.67

-0.64

-0.9


West South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

0.03

-0.23


Mountain

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.26


Pacific

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-
























Germany

New England

Middle Atlantic

East North Central

West North Central

South Atlantic

East South Central

West South Central

Mountain

Pacific


New England

-

1.39

1.69

1.37

1.54

1.87

1.5

1.33

1.34


Middle Atlantic

-

-

0.3

-0.02

0.15

0.48

0.11

-0.06

-0.05


East North Central

-

-

-

-0.32

-0.15

0.18

-0.19

-0.36

-0.35


West North Central

-

-

-

-

0.17

0.5

0.13

-0.04

-0.03


South Atlantic

-

-

-

-

-

0.33

-0.04

-0.21

-0.2


East South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.37

-0.54

-0.53


West South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.17

-0.16


Mountain

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

0.01


Pacific

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-
























Ireland

New England

Middle Atlantic

East North Central

West North Central

South Atlantic

East South Central

West South Central

Mountain

Pacific


New England

-

-0.09

0.83

0.52

0.92

1.32

0.95

0.47

0.1


Middle Atlantic

-

-

0.92

0.61

1.01

1.41

1.04

0.56

0.19


East North Central

-

-

-

-0.31

0.09

0.49

0.12

-0.36

-0.73


West North Central

-

-

-

-

0.4

0.8

0.43

-0.05

-0.42


South Atlantic

-

-

-

-

-

0.4

0.03

-0.45

-0.82


East South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.37

-0.85

-1.22


West South Central

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.48

-0.85


Mountain

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-0.37


Pacific

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-



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