# Reasons Africa is "lagging behind"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 18, 2010, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711 "2010-06-18T21:17:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/1 "2010-06-18T21:17:08Z")
The title should be self explanatory. Im looking for plausible reasons for the continent of Africa’s current state. I realize this is a complicated question. I have heard varying sub-reasons ,for example it having a North to South axis, rather than East to West (i.e. Europe, North America) making it harder for know-how to spread. Of course the impact of slave trading, foreigners taking advantage of their natural resources. This doesnt completly satisfy as an explantion. Im not well versed in the history. I would really be interested in your take on this. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/2 "2010-06-18T21:39:24Z")
This has been a much debated topic, and all of the things you have mentioned have been discussed. The general consensus seems to be the legacy of colonialism started a one-two punch that the Cold War finished, and that has left Sub-Sarahan Africa crippled beyond belief. A lack of accountability in leaders, a lack of “national” identity, corruption and lack of infrastructure are all part and parcel of the problems I mentioned above. Others will come along shortly to provide more and better information, but I should warn you: There is always a small contingent who bang the “Black people can’t do it because they are dumb” drum, no matter how much evidence you provide to refute them. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/3 "2010-06-18T22:00:21Z")
> [@Tristan](#): > > This has been a much debated topic, and all of the things you have mentioned have been discussed. The general consensus seems to be the legacy of colonialism started a one-two punch that the Cold War finished, and that has left Sub-Sarahan Africa crippled beyond belief. Granted that seems like valid propositions, however it also sounds too simple. My question (I freely admit my ignorance of African history) would then be: -Was there ever a “Golden Age” in Africa (presumably before the colonisation) with relative prosperity and peace? ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/4 "2010-06-18T22:17:37Z")
The first problem is that people think Africa is a country, instead of a collection of 54 countries. The second problem is assuming that an area can “lag behind.” What does that actually mean? What is the gold standard that countries are meant to achieve? And how many of the 54 African countries have to achieve that before “Africa” as a whole is considered to have “caught up”? Third problem: drought. Really, really bad drought. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/5 "2010-06-18T22:18:53Z")
Kleptocracy. Tribal politics/tribal warfare. The Cold War seems to have done more damage than colonialism. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/6 "2010-06-18T22:30:20Z")
Africa is a continent, of course it is made up by different countries. however, I would argue that some/a significant amount of these countries do have problems such as: diseases, poverty, starvation, corruption, war, low education etc…Significantly so as compared to many other parts of the world. Granted you might find other parts of the world with similar challenges, however the question was regarding the continent of Africa in this case. If you do not recognize that this continent is burdened with problems, then that is all good but hardly a common view. You did mentioned draught though, which seem like a rather weak explantaion. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/7 "2010-06-18T22:39:45Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > You did mentioned draught though, which seem like a rather weak explantaion. It was a really bad drought, think potato famine only larger and longer, and without anywhere for people to go, it lasted for 12 years. Draught [beer] would have been a great thing. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/8 "2010-06-18T22:55:28Z")
really bad droughts probably happened a lot of times in many countries in many countries However what does this mean in the big scheme of things? A 12 year drought and several countries goes into poverty, starvation, disease epidemics,tribalism, war etc… this is just not an explanation ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/9 "2010-06-18T23:42:34Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > -Was there ever a “Golden Age” in Africa (presumably before the colonisation) with relative prosperity and peace? Why would one demand an era of peace in Africa when no other continent has really had one? To your other point, prosperity: Sure. Egypt has had many periods of prosperity. South of Egypt, both Nubia and Ethiopia have had recurrent experiences of empire. Farther south, still, smaller empires speaking Swahili arose in the Lakes region in what is now Kenya and Tanzania. In addition, the regions where Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya are now located have experienced several long periods of prosperity, notably Carthage, then under Rome and Byzantium, and later under Damascus and Baghdad, then with various local kingdoms. Farther south, the empires of Mali, Ghana, and Songhai flourished for many years, (roughly consecutively). South of that, a number of different geographic features resulted in fewer large cities and, thus, no empires–just as one finds no empires among the pastoral regions of North and South America or Asia, (the Mongols arising at the edge of agricultural China). Generally, one needs to be able to establish a settled agricultural society in order to promote kingdoms and empires and the native food sources were not sufficient to permit the rise of great empires in the rgions I have named but of which you have not heard. Instead, pastoral societies dominated much of the region–again, much like similar regions of North and South America and Asia. When the Arabs and Europeans began penetrating farther into Africa, they initiated a slave trade that simultaneously weakened existing kingdoms with internecine warfare while physically removing millions of inhabitants. Later, European colonizers moved in and, while they established infrastructure to support their colonies, they varied between tolerating some local assistance without really promoting it, (Britain), and actively refusing to permit local peoples from being taught anything regarding the infrastructure (Belgium). In contrast, when the Europeans colonized Asia, they found larger kingdoms and empires with an existing civil infrastructure that they employed for their own uses, and the local inhabitants were able to adapt to the European industrial revolution. In the Americas, European colonization was accompanied by disease that destroyed most of the local population so that the colonies were, effectively, rebuilt as a new, Western subsidiary Europe. Africans, having resistance to European diseases, failed to die off, but lacking the strong internal bureaucracies of India, China, Siam, etc., were not incorporated into the European empires in the same manner and far less technical knowledge was transferred to local regions. When the European countries gave up their colonies, it was the height of the Cold War and several separate, (although interdependent), things happened. The West and the Soviets, vying for power and influence, continually interfered with local governments in ways that prevented serious development. At the same time, socialism had not been demonstrated to be ineffective and many African nations experimented with various forms of socialist economies, probably hamstringing their efforts. And, of course, most African nations had been “put together” by European powers with no concern for previous ethnic boundaries, so many ethnic conflicts arose as groups attempted to secure power for themselves. (This last is hardly an “African” characteristic as a review of the histories of Iraq, Yugoslavia, Ireland, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia will attest.) I am not sure what “simple” explanation you might reject; the situation is sufficiently complex. Some folks might employ “slavery” or “colonialism” as shorthand for a whole series of situations, but there is nothing simple about what happened. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2010, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/10 "2010-06-18T23:43:53Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > really bad droughts probably happened a lot of times in many countries in many countries > > However what does this mean in the big scheme of things? A 12 year drought and several countries goes into poverty, starvation, disease epidemics,tribalism, war etc… this is just not an explanation It is when you pile everything else on top of it. Africa’s biggest problem isn’t that it was hit by a drought, or colonialism, or the Cold War, or is still heavily tribal/clannish, or poor, or so on; the problem is that it’s all of those things. It’s collectively buried under problems and disasters, many of which synergetically make each other worse. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/11 "2010-06-19T00:05:51Z")
thanks for the post tomnebb, you made some most interesting points. I guess I should have been clearer, was there ever a “goldenER age” in most of Africa. I think we all can agree that it is a continent riddled with problems, worse than most. And it would perhaps be clearer if i’d asked "why is Africa in a worse state (economically, education-wise etc etc) than the western world. Which is from where Im writing this. If there is problem with this distinction I have failed to see it ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/12 "2010-06-19T01:09:20Z")
I’m not sure whether Africa follows this model, but I think it’s likely that tribal economics persist there. Basically, in tribal societies there’s a tendency to view property as shared among your people. If you need something, you go over to your neighbors hut and take it. If someone buys a car, it becomes the tribe’s car. When you move the tribe into a city with thousands of people, this changes instead to where it’s your family who shares everything, but with a big enough family the end result is the same. That result is, essentially, a socialist state. The harder you work, the more everyone else gets, and so no one works very hard. Again, I don’t know if this is an issue in Africa, but there’s also often the issue of meritocracy. People don’t just want property before they’ll work hard, they also want a good position doing work that they enjoy. They need the ability to secure themselves a living based on their own merits, not based on the color of their skin, whether they were born to nobility, or whatever. In a class-based or otherwise meritless society (like the USSR), a lot of people in the upper levels of the hierarchy aren’t particularly interested nor capable at their work. In result, the only way to get them to do anything is to bribe them (with money, by doing favors for them, by selling your sister to them, etc.), and with so many people offering bribes, they don’t even have to be efficient in responding to any of the bribes. Worse, this becomes an expectation of the job and ingrained in the system, and often seems to work its way down into pretty much everything. Bus drivers will sit there waiting for you to bribe them outside of their official salary before they’ll take you anywhere if they think they can actually shake you down. Police will stop you in the street and not let you continue on until you bribe them. This can last long after the meritless system that started it all has ended as there’s no one in the country who knows any other way or sees anything wrong with it, let alone trying to convince all of their employees and customers to forgo it. ---
**Author:** ![TurboNuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f19dbf/32.png) [@TurboNuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TurboNuke)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/13 "2010-06-19T01:24:19Z")
I heard this years ago but don’t have a cite. Waterways are very important for economic growth. Africa has the worse ratio of landmass to coastline of any of the inhabited continents. Also, it seems that tropical areas don’t do as well as temperate areas. Most of Africa is tropical. My proof: South Africa is temperate and seems to be doing better than most of Africa. I would have to agree that it’s a combination of these things. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/14 "2010-06-19T01:42:44Z")
> [@TurboNuke](#): > > Also, it seems that tropical areas don’t do as well as temperate areas. I’ve heard malaria blamed for that. Both for the obvious effects of sickening & killing people, and because supposedly it tends to leave the survivors with long term emotional trauma due to its unpleasantness. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/15 "2010-06-19T01:52:54Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’ve heard malaria blamed for that. Both for the obvious effects of sickening & killing people, and because supposedly it tends to leave the survivors with long term emotional trauma due to its unpleasantness. That argument was loose at best. Not making any sense at all, at worst ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/16 "2010-06-19T01:53:34Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > -Was there ever a “Golden Age” in Africa (presumably before the colonisation) with relative prosperity and peace? Actually, yeah. West Africa’s medieval age resembled Europe’s, with great kingdoms and empires. One of the world’s first universities is in Timbuktu, and Timbuktu was once likely the richest city on the planet and a center of inter-continental trade. When the first European explorers came to Africa, they were impressed by it’s “neat well-ordered cities.” It wasn’t that bad of a place at all. What went wrong? I think it’s more like “what didn’t go right?” Africa 600 years ago was on par with the rest of the world, which wasn’t that pleasant a place. But much of Africa didn’t move past that. Let’s also remember that the vast majority of Africa is not actually full of starvation and genocide. It’s mostly just a lot of pretty darn poor people doing their best. Climate and landscape is one factor. Africa is hindered by a couple vast and largely uninhabitable deserts and impassable impossible-to-cultivate rainforests. This means there will likely be conflict over fertile land and less communication and trade than there could be. Furthermore, there are lots of local diseases that sap the strength of what should be the workforce. Malaria kills more people than AIDS, and leaves good portion of what should be the strongest workers incapacitated for long periods of time. Sleeping sickness long made raising livestock impossible across much of the continent. And now AIDS is killing off even more productive workers, leaving behind children and the elderly who can’t contribute much to the economy. Droughts are another factor that just plain makes life harder. Colonialism screwed up a lot of stuff by creating fertile ground for “ethnic” conflicts (which are usually economic and political in nature.) Independence was a good thing, but given that many countries had less than ten college graduates in the country and no infrastructure, some countries were almost bound to fail. The Cold War made it even worse. The absolute worst leaders Africa has seen are a direct result of Cold War meddling, and many of the brightest and most visionary would-be leaders were assassinated by European powers. It’s likely we shot the golden age of Africa. Nor is this period over. We saw European run attempted coups up into the 1990s. Outside powers and business interests still have a lot of power shaping the continent. Finally, all this stuff builds on itself. Africa is at the point where it’s poverty leads to more poverty. Where disease leads to more disease. Unfortunately geography just leads to desertification and even worse geography. Even natural resources bring conflict. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/17 "2010-06-19T02:09:19Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > That argument was loose at best. Not making any sense at all, at worst Why? Being hit with malaria on a regular basis is hardly going to be helpful for a society. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/18 "2010-06-19T02:27:31Z")
Malaria. Shitty geography. Colonialism. Borders that makes no sense. Kleptocracy. War. Famine. AIDS. Religion. Sometimes, it’s just one goddamn thing after another. It’s not at all uncommon for some places to be shittier than others, and in the course of human history the shitty places have not remained the same. There was one a time when the Middle East was the center of human civilization, and shortly after that is was the eastern Meditteranean, while northern Europe was a backwater no decent educated person would ever want to live in. Now northern Europe is one of the best places in the history of the world to live and the Middl eAst is a shithole. China and India were, just a hundred years ago, whipping boys for the West, and now they’re ascendant powers. 200 years from now Africa might be in a golden age. Who knows? As has been pointed out, Africa’s 54 different countries in Africa, and their relative shittiness varies quite a lot. Countries like South Africa, Namibia and Botswana aren’t really that badly off, and make continued progress. South Africa has very well documented social problems, but to be honest you have to think it’s a miracle the place has not dissolved into civil war and horror. It was a psychotically fascist, thoroughly evil state with what amounted to demographic slavery for decades, and has successfully turned itself into a democratic state purely through the will of its people. I’m amazed they’ve done as well as they have, and some of their neighbours, Botswana and Namibia, are some of the continent’s most stable, reasonably governed regimes, and Mozambique has potential. I suspect Africa’s southern nations are on their way up. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/19 "2010-06-19T04:54:23Z")
> [@scamartistry](#): > > The title should be self explanatory. > > Im looking for plausible reasons for the continent of Africa’s current state. > I realize this is a complicated question… > > This doesnt completly satisfy as an explantion. > > Im not well versed in the history. I would really be interested in your take on this. The social transition as people moved from small hunter-gatherer groups a hundred strong to villages and towns inhabited by several thousand with more complex rules may have impacted on natural selection. [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?pagewanted=2](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?pagewanted=2) You may find economist Greg Clarks _‘Genetically Capitalist? The Malthusian Era and the Formation of Modern Preferences’_ or Peter Frost’s ’ _The Roman State and Genetic Pacification’_ useful. Also, see Clark’s reply to critics of his book\* ‘A Farewell to Alms’\*. The discussion of the impact of “female farming systems ” where men don’t have to do much work from _'The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution_’ is also interesting. > [@](#): > > In this paper I argue that there is evidence that the long Malthusian > era in stable agrarian societies actually changed human > preferences, perhaps culturally but also perhaps genetically. To > show this I demonstrate first that for England the rich had a > reproductive advantage at least from 1250 onwards. I also show > that this advantage was likely inherited by their children. Finally I > show that in the same interval there are signs that preferences > were changing in the pre-industrial economy. In a time when the > rich were taking over genetically people were becoming more > middle class in their orientation: time preference rates were lower, > hours of work longer, and numeracy and literacy increasing. Thus > the long delay between the Neolithic Revolution of 6,000 BC > which established settled agriculture and the eventual Industrial > Revolution may in part be explained by the time necessary for the > formation of preference consistent with modern capitalism. [http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/~harpend/readings/Genetically%20Capitalist.pdf](http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/~harpend/readings/Genetically%20Capitalist.pdf) > [@](#): > > Natural selection has altered at least 7% of our genome over the last 40 thousand years. And it has been doing so at an accelerating rate, particularly after agriculture replaced hunting and gathering less than ten > thousand years ago. > > At that time, the rate of genetic change may have risen over a hundred-fold (Hawks et al., 2007)… > > Thus, when a State enforces its monopoly on violence, it selects not only for certain phenotypes but also, indirectly, for certain genotypes. The historical economist Gregory Clark argues that this kind of behavioral selection has shaped the English population. With the imposition of central authority, male homicide fell steadily in England from the twelfth century to the early nineteenth. ..Clark ascribes this change to the reproductive success of upper- and middle-class individuals who differed statistically in their behavioral predispositions from the much larger lower class, including predispositions to violence. Although initially a small minority in medieval England, such individuals grew in number and their descendants gradually replaced the lower class through downward mobility. By the nineteenth century, their lineages accounted for most of the English population (Clark, 2007, pp. 124-129, 182-183; Clark, 2009). [http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/~harpend/readings/Genetic\_Pacification\_Frost.pdf](http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/~harpend/readings/Genetic_Pacification_Frost.pdf) > [@](#): > > McCloskey citing the review of the book by Robert Solow, argues that the experience of countries like India and China recently, and of immigrants to the US, shows that the idea that there deep seated cultural or genetic differences in peoples’ ability to succeed economically, which from the long histories of these societies, is unsupportable. > > On the contrary, I think that there is a lot of modern evidence that is supportive of this possibility. What is emphasized in A Farewell to Alms is that the processes identified for England occurred in all settled pre-industrial agrarian societies, though perhaps with different force. That suggests that if we want to find the maximum possible cultural and genetic difference between groups in the modern world we should contrast the people from long settled agrarian societies withthose from hunter-gatherer societies that never experienced settled institutionally stable agricultural systems. [http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/EREH%20response%20-%20revised.pdf](http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/EREH%20response%20-%20revised.pdf) > [@](#): > > Week 7: Subsistence and Social Diversity > > There are interesting regular patterns around the world in the relations between the sexes. In a few words, when men are forced to work to feed their families they are generally dull, quiet, and not very violent. When women can feed themselves and their children (and the men) males are likely to be gaudy, loud-mouthed, and prone to violence. Read this deleted chapter : > [http://the10000yearexplosion.com/human-cultural-diversity/](http://the10000yearexplosion.com/human-cultural-diversity/). ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711/20 "2010-06-19T05:45:00Z")
Another factor is national cognitive ability as measured by psychometric tests predicts productivity and macroeconomic outcomes. Garrett Jones & Joel Schneider review this here along with whether such cross country differences may change. > [@](#): > > Before we do so, let us briefly review the power of national average IQ to predict national productivity. Lynn and Vanhanen found a correlation of 0.7 between national average IQ and the level of GDP per worker in 81 countries. Jones and Schneider (2006) found a correlation of 0.82 between national average IQ and log GDP per worker, and found that national average IQ was statistically significant at the 1% level in 455 cross-country growth regressions that used all of Sala-i-Martin, Doppelhofer, and Miller’s (2006) robust growth variables as controls… > > The quantitative results of the last two sections imply that differences in national average IQ are substantial drivers of global income inequality. Thus, those who would understand the wealth of nations should be concerned with where these differences in national average IQ come from. Are they mostly genetic, as Lynn and Vanhanen (2002) and Rushton and Jensen (2005) conclude? > > Are they mostly driven by more malleable factors, like education, nutrition, and the physical environment, as we hope they are? Or are they instead driven by differences in culture (cf. Ogbu & Davis (2003)), which may prove to be even more intractable than any genetic differences? > While we leave most of these questions to future research, we will take a moment to address one key question: Can simple reverse causality can explain this relationship? In other words, does a dramatic rise in GDP per worker cause a dramatic rise in national average IQ? > … > > Average IQ’s start about ten points lower than in East Asia, but also end about ten points lower. There have apparently been no twenty-to-thirty-point IQ increases in either East or Southeast Asia as these regions rapidly emerged from dire poverty. > > So, where do these cross-country differences in IQ come from? Of course, the answer to such a question is far beyond the scope of any one paper, but already existing models in the economics literature may provide a starting point for future work. Galor and Moav (2002) and Robson and Kaplan (2003) have formally modelled the impact of natural selection on the creation of higher intelligence in human populations. The theorist looking to model differences across countries will find much of interest in these papers. > But while twenty-to-thirty point increases have not been documented, more modest IQ increases do occur on a national scale. Indeed, there is a large literature in psychology that studies the rise in IQ’s across the developed world, a rise of roughly two to three points per decade across most of the 20th century. This phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect (after Flynn (1987)), and it has been widely studied and widely debated. Explanations that psychologists have considered for the Flynn effect include better nutrition, better education, and educational television, as well as the possibility that the Flynn effect is merely a “nominal” rise in narrow test-taking ability with little impact on “real” general reasoning and information processing abilities. For helpful reviews of the Flynn effect literature, Neisser (1998) and Jensen (1998, 318-333) are highly recommended.9 > **[Jonespaper.pdf](https://www.mcgill.ca/files/economics/Jonespaper.pdf)** [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-africa-is-lagging-behind/543711.md?page=2)