Meritocracy, Social Mobility, Intergenerational Mobility—Posner

The three terms in my title are closely related. The first refers to a society in which people’s success is a function of their individual abilities rather than the wealth or position of their parents or other family members. The second, which is closely related, refers to the various social classes’ being permeable to entry by talented individuals from other classes. The third, a more technical social scientific term, refers to lack of correlation between parents’ and their children’s income or social status; the less positively correlated the parents’ income or social status is correlated with the income or social status of their children, the greater the intergenerational mobility in the society. 

If IQ were purely genetic and therefore only inherited, and if income were a linear function of IQ, children’s incomes would be very similar to their parents’ incomes and intergenerational mobility would be slight, with the important qualification, however, that social standing is not a function purely of income. There are scientists, highly regarded classical composers, distinguished poets, political leaders and other fficials, military heroes, priests, and others who have high social tatus but mediocre incomes. And notice that the correlation between parental nd child social standing or income would hold for any purely genetic trait hat was valued, such as athletic or musical potential, and not just for IQ. 

These examples underscore ecker’s point that a low level of intergenerational mobility is consistent ith meritocracy, even when as in the examples merit is a function of luck: hether your parents happen to have had a high IQ, and whether IQ is highly valued n the society you happen to have been born into. 

IQ is not entirely genetic (it’s enerally believed to be half genetic and half the result of other innate onditions, for example conditions during pregnancy and birth; early nvironmental conditions; and physical and mental health), but has a ubstantial genetic component, as just noted. And with the increased role of echnology in the economy and the expansion of the professions relative to other occupations, the financial and social status returns to IQ have risen. Increased assortative mating (likes with likes), attributable in part to a decline in discrimination and in part to the greater search for marital partners that is enabled by the Internet, will probably increase variance in IQ and thus increase the returns to the highest IQ strata, in the near future. 

That said, however, the United States is, at best, a highly imperfect meritocracy. The reason is the pattern of investment, both private and public, in children’s career and life prospects. Wealthy parents invest heavily in their children’s education by hiring tutors, paying the very high tuition charged by elite private schools and by colleges (public as well as private), making generous donations to such institutions, and financing extracurricular activities that impress college admissions
officers. Colleges compete for wealthy kids, seeing them as future generous alumni. Parents use personal contacts to land good jobs for their kids; sometimes hire them for the family business; and, of course, give, lend, and bequeath them money. Because public schools are financed mainly by local property taxes, the best public schools tend to be in high-income areas, and so wealthy kids that go to public schools rather than to private schools tend to go to the best public schools. Indeed, if there are no good public schools in a wealthy family’s neighborhood, the family will send its children to a private school. 

As a result of these factors, among the wealthy countries the level of intergenerational mobility is lower in the United States than in the four Scandinavian countries (which have the highest level of intergenerational mobility) and in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, France, and Spain, and slightly higher in the United States than in Italy and the United Kingdom. These rankings are highly correlated, as one would expect, with income inequality (the United  States is second-highest in inequality of income, after the United Kingdom, in the countries I just listed). Wealthy families that generously underwrite their children create more wealthy families in the next generation. 

Ideally, in order to maximize productivity, one would like the government to identify the high-IQ children in poor or lower middle class families and provide them with education and education-related services equivalent to those that wealthy families bestow on their usually high-IQ children. The need is acute in the United States because of our relatively quite low level of intergenerational mobility. Not much effort is being made to meet this need. The reasons probably are that children don’t vote (it is arguable that a parent should be given a bonus vote for every one of his or her children living with the parent), and that poor and lower middle-class parents have little political clout relative to old people, wealthy people, civil service pensioners, and other politically influential groups.

Comments

[Mfrancesryan]

Rather than say that IQ is "half genetic" it would be more correct to say that IQ is subject to a genetic cap. IQ can be lowered by poor prenatal conditions or poor childhood nutrition, and other environmental causes. But given good prenatal conditions and good childhood nutrition, a person's adult IQ is highly correlated with his parents' IQ, statistically.

It is unfortunate that one never hears of politicians calling for more help for poor high-IQ children. It is probably due to society's general dislike for the notion of high-IQ people.

[Jason]

Also worth noting that IQ (or some more subtle measure of true intelligence) might have a large genetic component but still not be highly correlated with your parents IQ. For a really complex trait like intelligence, it's likely due to the interplay of so many alleles that it's not going to come out in a nice Punnett square. All the more reason to support the suggestion in your last paragraph for not allowing high-IQ lottery tickets to slip through the cracks of society -- regardless of parental IQ or social status.

[Mfrancesryan]

Jason is right, correlations are on a group level, individual outcomes vary greatly.

[Observer]

There's another reason little effort is made to identify high-IQ children in poor families. Doing so would implicitly acknowledge that (1) not all brains are created equal, and (2) that the distribution of high IQs may vary among income groups and other demographic categories. Our egalitarian public education establishment doesn't want to go there. It's much easier to shoehorn everyone into a "college prep" curriculum and then ignore the high-IQ students in a low-income school who can't reach their potential because most of their classmates are being force-fed subject matter for which they have no interest or aptitude. (An interesting contrast is the effort devoted to identifying and developing promising athletes, particularly in "revenue" sports.) A modest proposal: No politician should be allowed to legislate about education before spending at least five years as a classroom teacher in a variety of public schools.

[Terry Bennett]

I agree with both Judge Posner and Observer that it is unlikely the U.S. government will make any serious effort to mine high-IQ candidates from the lower strata (anemic public school "gifted and talented" programs notwithstanding). However, this would be an excellent use of private wealth. Many a scholarship is slated for a "deserving" student from a means-tested background; it would be easy enough, if the political will of the donor were sufficiently fervent, to use IQ as the determinant and not merely assume that any lack of IQ is a self-fulfilling result of the economic disadvantage itself.

What you have equals what you are given plus what you work for. The top performers in any endeavor are those with an alignment of talent and passion. The arts are legendary for the struggles of practitioners filled with desire to create and yet devoid of talent; these people must work themselves to the bone just to attain mediocrity - and they do. Others find that it comes easy to them, but they are bored. Those with neither the talent nor the passion end up in some other field, as they should, and those with both talent and passion are ne plus ultra. The good news is that any talent at all, combined with hard work, can usually produce passable results. In other words, 25% talent and 75% work is quite likely to out-achieve 75% talent and 25% work. This is as it should be, because a meritocracy should reward the total, not merely the gift. Speaking as one copiously gifted and incorrigibly lazy individual, I assert that work is at least as laudable as talent.

[Horacio C]

Ideally, in order to maximize productivity, one would like the government to identify the high-IQ children in poor or lower middle class families and provide them with education and education-related services equivalent to those that wealthy families bestow on their usually high-IQ children. The need is acute in the United States because of our relatively quite low level of intergenerational mobility. Not much effort is being made to meet this need.

What's your justification for these assertions?

You need to show that providing additional educational resources to high-IQ children of lower class families will produce social utility in excess of the cost of those resources.

I'm not convinced that the marginal value of educational programs for poor children is greater than 1. There are plentiful resources for poor children with the drive and ability to excel. If we want to save more kids than we're saving right now, we need to fix the families of poor children. That's a different problem altogether.