Suggested Readings
Brad Delong reports that Yale professor Chris Blattman is looking for suggested readings for his class “Why is Africa poor and what (if anything) can the West do about it?” Blattman’s syllabus (pdf) seems excellent but includes nothing on IQ. What reading(s) would the GNXP crowd suggest he add? I expect that your suggestions will be different from the ones that Professor Blattman has received on his own blog.
Could this be part of the cause? “Islam’s Black Slaves” by Ronald Segal (2001).
(Chance of this being added to the reading list? Nil.)
What are the chances that a Yale course would include readings on IQ? I’d sooner expect to see the sun rise in the west tomorrow morning.
That may be true, but what would be the best article(s) to recommend? I am trying to be constructive but I don’t know this literature at all.
Rindermann confirms the Lynn-Vanhanen IQ-GDP work using international education tests:
_a_very_intelligen.cfm
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2007.02.002
Here are links to Garrett Jones’ relevant work:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2007/06/garett_jones
Here’s a Caplan-Stringer paper showing that increased IQ is related to more economically literate beliefs about policy:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/iqbeliefej.doc
by B Caplan – 2006 – Cited by 2 – Related articles
Gregory Clark, “The End of Alms”. Nothing else comes close.
john reader’s africa: biography of a continent. also, it’s farewell to alms.
Thanks for the links. I think that this Jones’ article:
http://mason.gmu.edu/~gjonesb/JonesSchneIQ
is most likely to be the winner. It is tough to ask someone to add “Farewell to Alms” (an entire book) to a syllabus for a course about Africa.
this paper has a lot of the argument in farwell to alms.
From the paper cited by David:
For example, in Kenya, average IQ scores
increased by a rate almost 3 times greater than
the average rate of increase in industrialized
countries over the 14-year period of 1984 to 1998.
I wasn’t aware of this factoid. Shame that Kenya seems to have fallen off the track recently, that would have been an interesting experiment.
Also, if you discuss IQ in your curriculum, be sure to include mention of the Flynn effect and other feedback connections between IQ and “development” (in a general sense). IQ is not the racial boogeyman that many seem to think it is.
I hope that Professor Blattman is more open-minded than DeLong, whose response to your suggestions would be something like putting his hands over his ears and shouting “NAH NANNY BOO BOO, I’M NOT LISTENINGGGGGG!”
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/09/brad-delong-purifier-of-comments.html
Blattman specifically asked for suggestions of the non-conservative variety, so I’ll bet he isn’t.
These guys are going to solve Africa’s problems any day now by burying their heads in the sand.
After reading Prof. Blattman’s blog, I’ve determined he’s one of the SWPL Whiterest people in America. He gets extra points for being Canadian as well. At one point he gushes on about a black Imam in Liberia thanking him for electing Obama.
How many billions more do we have to spend to keep guys like this “consulting” for the world bank? And how much more damage will we let them inflict on Africa for their own SWPL class aspirations?
God, his class will be stultifyingly boring.
I’d recommend John Reader’s “Africa: Biography of a Continent.” Also, David Lamb’s “The Africans” drove Barack Obama into a fury when he tried to read it in 1987. Finally, John Updike’s “The Coup” is extraordinary.
On the literary side, I recommend When A Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin — a book that has aroused surprisingly little interest in the Steve-o-sphere.
Regardless of cognitive differences, one thing the West can do to help Africa is to get rid of tariffs on agriculture. In fact, maybe the West should get rid of ALL tariffs on African produced products? Anything produced in Africa should have free access to Western markets. Another way of helping Africa is to provide the abortion pill for free, and/or, to pay Africans to get sterilized.
Yroger, I think there have been plenty of condoms shipped to Africa without making much of a dent in either births or AIDs. Similarly, wider availability of birth control and abortion coincided with an increase in illegitimate births in the U.S. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. That’s why many advocate more education for women, so they’ll have the attitudes of post-demographic-shift Europe. Also, tariffs on African goods aren’t that important. It’s subsidies of first-world agriculture that causes the problem.
On a completely unrelated note, in keeping with Razib’s commandment I have another GSS post, this time on attitudes toward interracial marriage by race, controlling for sex.