Bell Curve, The

Rise of the Cognitive Elite

Most of The Bell Curve examines the ways intelligence affects the fate of individuals in the U.S. social structure, irrespective of race or ethnicity. Extending earlier work by Herrnstein, The Bell Curve depicts the emergence of a cognitive elite in U.S. society during the 20th century, manifested by such trends as an increasing correlation between college graduation and IQ and increasing selectivity of top universities. The book identifies the underlying causes of these trends as (a) the declining salience of social origin as the major factor of class distinctions and (b) the growing demand for cognitive skills in the marketplace of modern industrial society. It relates the premium placed on intelligence to the increasing scale of organizations and markets, combined with the intellectual [Page 140]demands of complex technologies and intricate regulatory structures. According to the book, this process of “cognitive partitioning” results in the concentration of individuals with high IQs in the ranks of the educated elite and high-prestige occupations.

Herrnstein and Murray reckon that because of assor-tative mating for intelligence (the tendency of spouses to have similar IQs) and because IQ is in part genetically inherited, cognitive partitioning may lead to the formation of a quasi-hereditary cognitive elite, separated from the rest of the population by a widening economic gap and physical distance in residence and the workplace. They paint a pessimistic picture of a future “custodial state,” in which the cognitive elite (now merged with the affluent) isolates itself in gated communities from a low-IQ underclass drained of its leadership and confined to deteriorating urban ghettos. Against this stark projection, the authors express hope for an alternative future, in which there would be a return to local communities in which neighbors take care of each other, rules of conduct would be made simple to understand and to follow, and everyone would find a “valued place” irrespective of their ability.

Herrnstein and Murray document the importance of intelligence in contemporary U.S. society with analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a longitudinal study of 12,000 youth aged 14 to 22 in 1979. Using data for non-Hispanic Whites only, they contrast the explanatory power of IQ (measured as the score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test) with that of socioeconomic status (a composite measure based on parents' income, education, and occupational status) in predicting socio-economic outcomes. For many outcomes—dropping out of school, graduating from college, living in poverty, being unemployed, committing a crime, or having a child out of wedlock—they find that IQ is a better predictor of the outcome than is socioeconomic status. Effects of IQ are particularly strong for educational and economic outcomes such as dropping out of high school, graduating from college, and being dependent on welfare. IQ is more weakly related to other life outcomes, such as being married before the age of 30 or self-reported crime.

...