Why have East Asian countries been 3rd world until recently, despite high IQ?

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[–]FoxySDTWhite Nationalist 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It tends to be a staple on the alt right that IQ is very important in the development of advanced cultures/countries.

This is true but first you should know that the correlation between national IQ and GDP p.c. is between 0.59 - 0.7 depending on which type of correlation you use. This means that IQ alone explains between 35-50% of variation in GDP p.c. And while this is more than any other single variable (by far) there is still huge chunk unexplained.

To see what explains the rest we need to look at those countries whose GDP p.c. is higher (or lower) than what their IQ would predict and examine their specific local factors. When you do this you will notice discernible patterns among them. One cluster of such countries are Caribbean islands who live off of Western tourism and foreign investments. The others are Middle Eastern countries who got rich thanks to their large oil reserves.

Doing the same analysis, this time for countries with GDP p.c. lower then what they "should" have (among which is China) you will notice that the common variable among them is former or present socialist government. These include Eastern European nations, China, Mongolia, N. Korea, Vietnam. So to answer your question - it's due to socialism. Yes, IQ does mater a lot but there are things that can ruin your economy even if you have high IQ population.

You can read chapter 4 of Richard Lynn's book Intelligence A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences for more detailed explanation.