"In his recent book Hive Mind economist Garett Jones argues that the direct effect of IQ on personal income is modest, and that most of the benefits of higher IQ flow from various spillover effects that make societies more productive, boosting everyone’s income. This, he says, explains the “IQ paradox” whereby IQ differences appear to explain a lot more of the economic differences between nations than within them." (...) “Fans of g would do well to look at the labor lit: 1 IQ point predicts just 0.5% to 1.2% higher wages.” He has also said that, in terms of standardized effect sizes, IQ accounts for only about 10% of variance in personal income (a correlation of ~0.32).
At some very crude levels (at the extremes) it fares better (e.g. someone below 90 would not do very well) but in general is nowhere near representative.
I'm glad you actually cited something, because online discussions of IQ tend to be ridiculously fraught with baseless speculation and poorly substantiated opinions. Thanks for the link, will have to dig into it.
As a counterpoint, there are a few meta-surveys which suggest that individuals with higher IQs generally have better[1] long term outcomes. I emphasize individual here because your source appears to be analyzing it at the level of economic productivity and industrial output at the national level (but correct me if I'm wrong).
Here are a few sources I've read, which have been aggregated (with light commentary) by gwern:
"In his recent book Hive Mind economist Garett Jones argues that the direct effect of IQ on personal income is modest, and that most of the benefits of higher IQ flow from various spillover effects that make societies more productive, boosting everyone’s income. This, he says, explains the “IQ paradox” whereby IQ differences appear to explain a lot more of the economic differences between nations than within them." (...) “Fans of g would do well to look at the labor lit: 1 IQ point predicts just 0.5% to 1.2% higher wages.” He has also said that, in terms of standardized effect sizes, IQ accounts for only about 10% of variance in personal income (a correlation of ~0.32).
At some very crude levels (at the extremes) it fares better (e.g. someone below 90 would not do very well) but in general is nowhere near representative.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...