Bell Curve

154 Cognitive Classes and Social Behaviorbound up with the dropout process. The children of lower-class familiesare more likely to end up with a GED than are the children of averageor upper-class families. There is irony in this: Throughout Part 11, wedescribe social problems that are more understandable once cognitiveability is brought into the picture and for which socioeconomic backgroundis not as important as most people think. But the one social problemthat has a widely acknowledged cause in cognitive ability-schooldropout-also has a strong and complex socioeconomic link.When it comes to explaining who gets a college education amongwhites, both academic merit and socioeconomic hackground play importantroles. But while socioeconomic privilege can help if the youngsteris reasonably bright, there are limits to what it can do if he is not.And if cognitive ability is high, socioeconomic disadvantage is no longera significant barrier to getting a college degree.Chapter 7Unemployment, Idleness, andlnj uryEconomists distinguish between being unemployed and being out of the laborforce. The unemployed are looking for work unsuccessfully. Those out of thelabor force are not looking, at least for the time being. Among young whitemen in their late 20s and early 3Os, both unemployment and being out of thelabor force are st.rongly predicted by low cognitive ability, even after takingother factors into account.Many of the white males in the NLSY who were out of the labor force hadthe obvious excuse: They were still in college or graduate school. Of those notin school, 15 percent spent at least a month out of the labor force in 1989.The proportion was more than twice as high in cognitive Class V as in ClassI. Socioeconomic background was not the explanation. After the effects of IQwere taken into account, the probability of spending time out of the labor forcewent up, not down, as parental SES rose.Why are young men out of the labor force? One obvious possibility is physicaldisability. Yet here too cognitive ability is a strong predictor: Of the menwho described themselves ns being too disabkd to work, more than nine outof ten were in the bottom quarter of the IQ distribution; fewer than one intwenty were in the top quarter. A man's IQ predicted whether he describedhimself as disabled better than the kinds of job he had held. We do not knowwhy intelligence and physical problem are so closely related, but one possibilityis that less intelligent people are more accident pone.The results are similar for unemployment. Among young white men whowere in the labor market, the likelihood of unemployment for high school graduatesand college graduates was equally dependent on cognitive ability. Socioeconomicbackground was irrelevant once intelligence was taken intoaccount.Most men, whatever their intelligence, are working steadrly. However, forthat minon'ty ofmen who are either out of the labor force or unemployed, the