Why are Jewish people so disproportionately successful

Great Debates
1

Jewish people are overrepresented in fields as diverse as politics, science, the wealthiest americans, art, etc. compared to their population size. Jewish people are only 2% of Americans but they make up about 10% of senators, about 25% of nobel prize winners and fields medal winners, 20% of the wealthiest 400 americans, etc.

I can think of a few potential causes.

Jews have a higher IQ, around 115 on average for verbal and mathematical IQ, but a little lower for spatial. But there is no real correlation between IQ and wealth or life success, and the correlation between IQ and income is pretty weak. I think there is about an extra $500-1000 in average income per year per IQ point, but only about $50 in extra net wealth per IQ point (since higher income people can spend themselves into debt too). So the higher IQ could explain some of the success in fields like science, but it doesn’t explain why Jews are more successful at politics or why more wealthy people are Jewish.

There is a culture that encourages success, that could play a role. Second generation immigrants from all over the world are likely more successful than the average person, they seem to be overrepresented in fields like science, engineering or medicine (especially Asian immigrants). About 14% of doctors are Jewish (again vs 2% of the population). So a culture that emphasizes success (especially in the face of persecution, where success can function as a buffer to keep you safe from abuse) could explain part of why Jewish people make up far more than 2% of high prestige careers than their population.

Another part could be that since Jewish people have such a history of persecution, maybe there is a cultural attitude that you have to succeed to prove yourself and people like you. But I don’t know if you can really apply that to all Jews. I’ve known various Jews, many don’t really identify with that label of Jewish anymore than I identify with the nation my great grandparents came from. So I don’t know how valuable that would be.

There is the fact that maybe it is a self fulfilling prophecy. There are more white males who are 6’2" as CEOs than you would expect based on their population distribution. It isn’t that tall white males are necessarily more competent, just that people have an unconscious judgement that they are competent so they give them more power and authority. Perhaps Jewish people have the same thing, people have an unspoken assumption they are good at XYZ, so they are more likely to get hired at XYZ. But things like that don’t explain why 20% of the wealthiest americans are Jewish since they likely had to be entrepreneurs or the children of entrepreneurs to get to that level of success.

So fundamentally, why do Jewish people succeed at such a diverse group of things? A higher IQ could make them better at fields like science or academia, but it doesn’t explain their higher than average success in art or getting wealthy. There could be cultural pressures, but Asian americans also have a lot of cultural pressures to succeed and they aren’t 10% of senators. There could be a cultural attitude of success, but a lot of Jews don’t really think about their own Jewishness or what it means to their relationship to the world. And Jewish people have been persecuted just as much (if not alot more) than they’ve been viewed as exceptional. Jews were overrepresented in law, business, politics, etc in Germany before the holocaust too, hardly a society that would view Jews as individuals people ‘want’ in positions of power (the way people today might view a tall white man as someone they unconsciously want to be in charge). So even in cultures where people put up roadblocks for Jewish success, Jews still are disproportionately successful in a wide range of fields. Except sports.
If I like their race, how can that be racist - Jerry Seinfeld

2

I would attribute it to their cultural appreciation of education. They have had near 100% literacy for hundreds if not thousands of years. That has to count for something.

3

It’s a combination of all the things in the OP and what BrotherCadfael just added. How much more reason do you need?

4

Jewish people or Jewish men?

I wonder how Jewish Women compare to their Shiksa sisteren.

5

Just a nitpick - I hate the term “Jewish people”. To me it seems that when it is used in place of “Jews” that’s because “Jews” somehow sounds derogatory to the speaker.

6

I have no doubt that Asians as a group in the US have somewhat similar success, without the representation in politics.

7

Not according to this list of the ethnic makeup of the forbes 400 from 2009.

Jewish [or part Jewish] 35.25%
East Asian 2%
Indian 1.25%
Middle Eastern 1.25%

Also I don’t see Asians over represented in the arts either. So Asians may make up a higher % of high prestige occupations like medicine or engineering, but they don’t make up the super wealthy, politicians or artists.

8

This is an excellent question. One my instructors was Jewish and he invited me over to his family. One of his daughters showed me her coin collection and one of the coins were unrecognizable to me, it had all sorts of weird Arabic-Chinese-Claw like script on it. She noticed I was looking at the coin and she told me that it was shekel (I never saw one till then) and went on to say that Jewish people were special and she was one of god’s people. Obviously, my instructor was embarrassed and quickly ushered her upstairs, but I thought it was cute and likely a personal motivator for her. I don’t know whether my former instructor’s Jewish home is representative of how Jewish families are (I don’t know), but such homes would put out smarter kids simply due to the inertia of self-confidence and self-motivation such kids would have. Just my 2 cents.

  • Honesty
9

Studies have shown (weasel words, no cite) that highly affluent people are only marginally more intelligent than normal, as the OP recognizes. These studies demonstrate two fundamental and invariant characteristics of people who acquire a substantial amount of wealth at a relatively young age. The first is that they eschew using credit in any form, with the exception of a home mortgage. The second is that they are always doing something tangibly productive from the time they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night; they’re always doing something. I would venture to guess that this plays a significant role in the relative success of Jews over the general population. They also seem to value a traditional, nuclear family lifestyle. Again, this is just a guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised of that confers upon them a certain psychological resiliency which enables them to better compete in the academic and financial sectors.

10

I’d also add in another few cultural aspects -

The Jewish people were historically one people spread out among and travelling between many nations, in eras long before the internet. They had no natural resources; they were instead rich in exposure to the ideas of many cultures. So the culture fostered skills in the business of ideas, developing them, transporting them, translating them, transforming them, creatively adapting them to novel cultures and circumstances. You work with what you got: you got oil you drill wells, you got how another culture solved a similar problem you exploit that idea in a similar circumstance in a different culture even if you need to be a bit creative to make it work. It was also a nice set up for getting involved in trade of other things as well, which historically was were many Jewish finincial dynasties were created.

Also the religious tradition of arguing … even with God. The stories that got emphasis were ones of Moses arguing with God, Jacob wrestling with the angel, so on. The great and revered rabbis were those who were known to argue their case, their interpretation, better and more tenaciously. The students who could defend an interpretation were praised. The religious tradition was not to merely memorize what the laws were but to look for evidence that supported one interpretation over the other and to question. The value is revealed in an old proverb which mocked someone as “a bookcase; not a scholar.” As some became more assimilated into various mainstream cultures and cared less about Talmudic debates they applied those same traditions to more mainstream subjects - a good fit for the sciences in particular.

My WAG is that these “advantages” are becoming less important in today’s era as everyone has exposure to the world of ideas and arguing has become a more valued actvity by many other cultures as well.

11

I can just give my experience. I grew up in a heavily Jewish neighborhood. My friends and I liked to play sports some times, but none of us was ever pressured to excel in sports, or ever fantasize about sports being a career. All my friends went to college, good colleges too. When I went to NYC schools we were heavily tracked, so that might be a reason. And no one ever put anyone down for getting good grades.
And my mother and father were far prouder of me getting into MIT than they would have been for any possible achievement in sports. Sandy Koufax was cool, but we all admired Einstein far more.

I wonder how many smart kids don’t live up to their potential because they feel it would be bucking social convention as opposed to following social convention as was the case for me and my friends. Not to mention that though we all went to Hebrew School, we never got taught anything anti-scientific.
We lived in a purely middle class environment - no one could remotely be considered as rich.

12

For much of history Jewish girls and women were discouraged from participating in the intelllectual traditions their brothers and husbands were pushed into (often by them). Still here’s a telling factoid: only 40 women have ever been awarded Nobel Prizes and as of 2009 7 of them, yes over 17%, were Jewish women. (We cannot count Lisa Meitner whose lab partner got one but who denied her equal contribution.)

13

Just wait until the timeline for immigration catches up. About another 30 years.

14

Additionally, your figures only represent wealth.

15

Of Forbes’ top 100 richest individuals in the world 17% are Asian.

16

Yes, but you also must consider that a self-identified group with few distinguishing characteristics has the unique ability to expel people who don’t live up to cultural expectations. If you are too lazy to study the Torah, or if you aren’t interested in compulsory education for your kids, you can just convert. In short, the high demands placed on adherents weeds out the uncommitted, which had the lucky side-effect of making the remaining Jews better prepared for a (future) world where education matters.

Just look at the number of Jews over time, especially around the the first century to what it was a few centuries later. Many Jewish people decided for one reason or another that being Jewish, and all that that entails, was not worth the sacrifice. That, in addition to many of the things you mentioned matters a lot. Not to simplify too much, but it is kinda telling that there are about 15 million Jews in the world compared to 1.2 billion Catholics, 1.6 billion Muslims, and around 900 million Hindus. There are roughly the same number of Jews as Mormons. Now obviously there are a number of reasons for that, but it pretty amazing that a religion that has been around so long has never really gained a large relative following. One reason is because the requirement of literacy in a mostly illiterate, agrarian world, was too high a cost for all but the most committed and those who had facility with such things. Thus, it’s not so much that Jews are smarter or more intelligent, it’s that circumstances have weeded out many of the people who weren’t. It’s kinda like how most Harvard grads are smart and/or successful.

17

We try harder. Like Avis.

But seriously, I can only describe my own experience, obviously. But in my family we weren’t just pushed to be successful, we were expected to be successful. And everybody in our family became successful, with pretty much no exceptions. I had many, many role models to draw from. I mean, look at this list I can draw up without too much effort:

My dad and I are both engineers.
Two uncles are university professors.
Two other uncles are engineers.
Three cousins are engineers.
Two cousins are doctors.
Two cousins are university professors.

Etc., etc. To me this is normal, but on the rare occasion that I mention this to friends, they are astounded that one family could have this many intellectuals.

18

Since China alone makes up over 19% of the world, it seems Asians are under-represented.

19

We don’t proselytize. In fact, Judaism actively discourages conversions. According to Judaism, you’re just as good in the eyes of God if you’re not a Jew, and instead of all the intricacies of Jewish mitzvot, all you have to do is follow a few simple Noahide laws.

20

Asia proper (Russia, China, India, etc) isa 60% of the human race. So there are going to be Asians in that list.

I don’t know what % of the Forbes 100 are Jewish. Looking at that list Soros, both Koch, Ellison, Bloomberg, Bettencourt, Paulson, etc. all seem to be jewish, I think.

Considering that jews make up only 0.2% of global population, that is a pretty impressive list and I’m guessing 10-20 of the top 100 are Jewish. However most billionaires seem to come from OECD nations, and Jews tend to disproportionately live in those nations too.

0.2% of the global population and 11.5% of all billionaires. Pretty impressive numbers.