Mankind’s IQ is 84-88. Becker May 2018 update.

Belorussia has long been a blank spot on the world IQ maps (and when it was not so, its results were based on the average of Ukraine, Russia, and Lithuania’s scores).

However, in David Becker’s latest world IQ update, there finally appeared a concrete estimate of Belorussian IQ:

Lynn, R., Gospodarik, E., Salahodjaev, R. & Omanbayev, B. A Standardization of Raven’s SPM+ in Belarus. Mankind Quarterly

I don’t think it has been published yet – at least, it’s not in the MQ archives – but a friend kindly provided me a preprint.

In the case of Belarus, a provisional IQ of 95.1 was estimated as the average of the measured IQs of Russia (96.5) to the north-east, Lithuania (94.6) to the west and Ukraine (94.3) to the south (Lynn and Vanhanen, 2012, pp 19-30). … The Standard Progressive Matrices Plus (SPM+) was administered in early 2017 to a sample of 397 13 to 15-year-olds (203 boys and 175 girls) with a mean age of 14.0 years. … The mean score of the boys was 33.6 (SD = 5.8) and mean score of the girls was 33.9 (SD = 5.7). This difference is not statistically significant. The average of the boys and girls is 33.75 and this represents a British IQ of 97.5 on the the British standardization norms for those aged 14.0 given in Raven (2008).

I am personally quite happy with this development, because I have long maintained that Belorussians are about as bright, if not slightly brighter, than Great Russians, and considerably brighter than Ukrainians.

This is accompanied by the footnote that some Great Russians are very bright (e.g. Yaroslavl, leaving aside the Moscow/SPB cognitive clusters) while other Great Russians are quite dull (Irkutsk/Zabaykal, the Kuban).

My reasons for believing this:

Has had more post-Soviet economic success than Russia, let alone the Ukraine, despite having no significant natural resources apart from gas pipeline rents.

Has accomplished this while preserving widespread state ownership. Even so, it does well on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings, suggesting intelligent, technocratic policy-making (Lukashenko’s escapades regardless).

Belorussia is more socially liberal than Russia or the Ukraine (the latter despite intensive State Department propaganda).

Belorussia also has has higher trust than Russia or the Ukraine.

The BSSR was the only Soviet republic apart from the RSFSR that was a net donor to the Soviet budget.

Belorussia has had a reputation for producing high quality manufactured products since at least the era of the late USSR, including optical sights and furniture.

Here’s what I wrote about the Belorussians in my comprehensive survey of Russian IQ for Sputnik & Pogrom:

Nobody has yet directly measured Belorussian IQ, nor did they participate in PISA or TIMSS/PIRLS. But we can assume they are comparable to the results from Central Russia. Despite the huge role of the state in the economy and European sanctions, their GDP per capita (PPP) is more than twice as high as that of the Ukrainians. Strangely enough, Belorussians are more “European” in their views than both Russians and Ukrainians: More trusting, less religious, and even more approving of gay marriage, despite the purely ritualistic gay pride parades through the streets of Kiev. Leaving aside any moral judgments, all these positions are associated with higher IQ. Fortunately, Ukraine and Belarus have finally decided to participate in the next round of PISA, so after December 2019 we will finally have concrete data.

Now n=397 isn’t of course the best sample, but it’s better than nothing, and suggests that my intuitions on this matter were trending in the right direction. But we’ll see come 2019.