Why slight variations in IQ can mean a world of difference for nations (an infographic).

“Outside of a few countries with abundant natural resources, the most important productive asset in each nation is the human mind,” writes author and economics professor, Garett Jones. In his new book, Hive Mind, Jones argues that while standardized tests can’t tell us everything about how productive the mind is, they do reveal quite a lot about a country’s overall prosperity—more than most would think.

Average national test scores, while not a perfect statistic, still provide a remarkably robust metric for a nation’s overall well-being. As it turns out, the cognitive skills that those scores roughly index, predict nation-wide traits of financial prudence, social cohesion, and political integrity—all significant components to a country’s overall prosperity. The following infographic—drawing on an array of economic and cognitive data analyzed in Hive Mind—distills in broad brushstrokes a few of Jones’s key arguments, showing how your nation’s IQ matters so much more than your own.



