In their controversial book, "The Bell Curve", Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray brought up the possibility of a deterioration in genetic quality in relation to intelligence due to the composition of America's immigration intake.
They base this concern on the fact that different racial or ethnic groups
tend to score differently on tests of intelligence. For instance American
blacks score about 15 points
on average below whites while Latinos score at an intermediate level
between blacks and whites (around 91 to 94 I.Q. points).
The number of white immigrants to America has tended to fall dramatically
over recent decades and this has not been balanced by the increase in migrants
from East Asia. In the
1980's for instance non-Latino whites made up only ll% of America's
intake of legal migrants while blacks made up 9% and Latinos 41%. In other
words half or more of their migrant intake consisted of groups who tend
to score well below the white average in I.Q. tests. Curiously immigrant
blacks tend to score about 5 points higher than American blacks on I.Q.
tests while immigrant Latinos score 7 points lower than American-born Latinos.
There is evidence that immigrants as a whole are self-selected for qualities
that make for success. They are on a steep earnings curve and within ten
to fifteen years tend to earn as much as native-born Americans of similar
age and education. There is however a big difference between migrants from
western Europe and those from less developed countries.
The Europeans have tended to do increasingly well while those from
the less developed countries have tended to have relatively decreasing
incomes.
Before we look at the implications for Australia's immigration program it might be useful to look at comparisons of the scores of various racial/ethnic groups. Richard Lynn has reviewed numerous test results from different countries and his results give a good idea of which groups perform the best.
Whites in Europe, Britain, North America and Australasia have an overall
mean of 100 I.Q. points. Indians in India score a mean of 86 while those
in Britain score 96. East Asians tend
to score a little better than whites. A number of tests in Japan gave
mean scores ranging from 97 to 110. Samples with children in Hong Kong
ranged from 108 to 116, but a sample from the Peoples Republic of China
scored 101. Tests in Taiwan and Singapore gave means of 105 and 110 respectively.
Samples of Asian populations in the United States and Canada gave means
of from 100 to 107 and from 100 to 105 respectively. People of mixed Negro-White
ancestry tend to score lower than whites. A large number of tests have
given average I.Q.s of about 85 for the mixed race populations of the United
States and Britain. Coloured South Africans tend to score about the same.
Negroes of unmixed ancestry tend to score lower. Scores from South Africa
ranged from 65 to 81, those from other parts of Africa ranged from 65 to
86. Scores for peoples in South East Asia and the Pacific range from 80
to 95.(R. Lynn,1991 in Rushton and Ankney,1997)
In the U.S. Asian Americans who sit the Scholastic Aptitude Test tend to gain, on average high scores in mathematic ability while Blacks tend to score poorly on average.
A few points to consider in relation to the I.Q. scores of Asians -
The high scores came from those who have their origins in north east Asia.
Austronesians appear to score lower
and in fact results from Singapore show lower scores for Malays than
for ethnic Chinese. The "overseas" Chinese tend to score considerably better
than those in mainland China. To a certain extent the high scores could
be a result of selective immigration - those who migrate tend to be smarter
than those who stay home.
Returning to "The Bell Curve" for a moment, Herrnstein and Murray pointed
out that brighter people are much less likely to be unemployed, will earn
better incomes and will be less likely to end up in prison than the less
intellectually endowed. If there is a genetic deterioration for intelligence
then social problems like unemployment and crime would be expected to worsen.
Now to look specifically at Australia. Considering the high scores of
overseas Chinese one would expect that there would not be a problem with
them. To an extent this seems true.
Chinese migrants do not figure highly in unemployment or prison statistics.
Unfortunately the same does not go for some of the other Asian groups.
The 1993 National Prison Census revealed an imprisonment rate for the Australian-born
of 132 per 100,000
of population. The rate for those born in New Zealand was 159, Papua
New Guinea and Oceania 165, Lebanon 261, Turkey 223 and Vietnam 167. The
rate for Australian-born is inflated by the unusually large imprisonment
rate for Aboriginals.
Statistics comparing income and unemployment show that migrants from
non-English Speaking Backgrounds have lower levels of labour force participation,
higher unemployment rates and lower average incomes than either the Australian-born
or migrants
from an English Speaking Background. In August 1997 the unemployment
rate for those migrants who had arrived since 1996 was 21.5%. The ABS indicated
in 1995 that about 40% of the NESB unemployed had been in that situation
for a year or more.
(Castles et al.. 1998)
Figures based on the 1996 Census show a relationship between ethnicity
and income. The following are from statistics on the weekly incomes of
males aged 25-44 and living in Sydney. They have been broken down into
four income ranges and the birth places groups most highly represented
in each range are:
Lebanon 40.7%
Vietnam 36.8%
Korea 35.8%
Turkey 33.5%
Cambodia & Laos 33.5%
From $300 to $599 p.w.
Philippines 50.2%
China(exc Hong Kong) 49.4%
Cambodia & Laos 49.2%
Fiji 48.1%
From $600 to $999 p.w.
UK & Ireland 35.1%
India 34.7%
Australia 34.9%
Germany 33.8%
Malaysia 32.7%
Poland 32.3%
$1000 p.w. plus
South Africa 39.3%
Malaysia 29.1%
UK & Ireland 25.9%
Hong Kong 20.7%
Germany 20.3%
(ABS,1996 in Birrell & Seol,1998)
There is some evidence of genetic deterioration due to the composition
of our migrant intake but it is probably not as great as the problem that
Herrnstein and Murray see in the
United States. This does not mean that we should be complacent. In
the above survey some of the poorer earning groups, Lebanese and Vietnamese
for instance, were the more numerous while high earning groups like Germans
and South Africans tended to be
numerically less well represented. Furthermore different birth place
groups have different fertility rates.
The total fertility rate,(TFR) for Australian-born women during the period 1987-91 was 1.8. A few of the ethnic groupsnoted for poor economic success, unemployment and criminality have noticeably higher TFRS. For Lebanon-born women the TFR was 3.4 and Turkey-born it was 2.3. Some of the more successful groups have fairly low fertility rates. Germany-born women had a TFR of 1.4, Hong Kong-born 1.1, South Africa-born 1.3 and UK and Ireland-born 1.6.(ABS,1991 in Abbasi-Shavazi,1998)
With lower birth rates and higher standards of living in Britain and
western Europe there will be less pressure to migrate to Australia. A similar
situation exists in much of north-east
Asia. Australia will probably experience increasing problems in attracting
people from those countries which)have been providing our most successful
migrants. Unless there is a decline in immigration we can expect the sort
of problems associated with genetic deterioration to increase.
REFERENCES
Bob Birrell and Byung-Soo Seol, "Sydney's Ethnic Underclass",
Mohammad Jalal Abbasi-Shavazi, "The Fertility of Immigrant Women
in Australia" both in People and Place Vol 6 No 3 1998
Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve Free
Press, New York, 1994
J. Philippe Rushton and C. Davison Ankney, "Race and Sex
Differences in Brain Size and Cognitive Ability", in Advances
in Cognition and Educational Practice Vol 4 JAI Press, 1997
S. Castles, W. Foster, R. Iredale and G. Withers, Immigration
and Australia: Myths and Realities Allen and Unwin, St Leonards,
1998
By Horace MacGillicuddy
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