Bell Curve

142 Cognitive Classes and Social Behaviorand culturally, these are supposed to be the advantaged Americans:whites of European descent. But they have one big thing working againstthem: they are not very smart.Like many other disabilities, low intelligence is not the fault of theindividual. Everything we know about the causes of cognitive ability,genetic and environmental, tells us that by the time people grow to anage at which they can be considered responsible moral agents, their IQis fairly well set. Many readers will find that, before writing anotherword, we have already made the case for sweeping policy changes meantto rectift what can only be interpreted as a palpably unfair result.And yet between this and the chapters that will explore those policyissues stretch a few hundred pages of intervening analysis. There is a reasonfor them. By adding poverty to the portrait of cognitive stratificationdescribed in Part I, we hope to have set the terms of a larger problemthan income inequality. The issue is not simply how people who are pcnxthrough no fault of their own can be made not poor but how we-all ofus, of all abilities and income levels-can live together in a society inwhich all of us can pursue happiness. Changing policy in ways that affectpoverty rates may well be part of that solution. But as we observedat the outset of the chapter, poverty itself has been declining as variouscl~scontents have been rising during this century, and curing poverty isnot necessarily going to do much to cure the other pains that afflictAmerican society. This chapter's analysis should establish that the traditionalsocioeconomic analysis of the origins of poverty is inadequateand that intelligence plays a crucial role. We are just at the beginningd understanding how intelligence interacts with the other problems inAmerica's crisis.Chapter 6SchoolingLeaving school before getting a high school diploma in the old days was wuallynot a sign of failure. The youngster had not dropped out but simply movedon. As late 1940, fewer than half of 1 8-year-old? got a high school diploma.But in the postwar era, the high school diploma became the norm. Now, nothaving one is a social disability of some gravity.The usual picture of high school dropouts focuses on their socioeconomiccircumstances. It is true that most of them are fiom poor families, but the relationshipof socioeconomics to school dropout is not simple. Among whites,almost no one with an IQ in the top quarter of the disnihution faib to get ahigh school education, no matter how poor their families. Dropout is extremelyrare throrlghout the upper half of the IQ distribution. Socioeconomic backgroundhas its most powerful effect at the lowest end of the social specnum,among students who are already below average in intelligence. Being poor hasa small effect on dropping out of school idpendent of la; it has a sizable independenteffect on whether a person finishes school with a regular diplomaor a high school equivalency certificate.To raise the chances of getting a college dq-ee, it helps to be in the upperhalf of the distribution for either IQ or socioeconomic status. But the advantageof a high lQ outweighs that of high status. Similarly, the disadvantage ofa low ZQ outweighs that of low status. Youngsters fiompoor backgrounds withhigh IQs are likely to get through college these days, but those with low lQs,even if they come from well-to-do backgrounds, are not.Ofall the social behaviors that might be linked to cognitive ability,school dropout prior to high school graduation is the most ohvious.Low intelligence is one of the best predictors of school failure, andstudents who fail a grade or two are likely to have the least attachmentto school. And yet this relationship, as strong as it is now, is also new.