The Danish psychologist Helmuth Nyborg has an academic paper soon to be published in Personality and Individual Differences (“The decay of Western Civilization: Double Relaxed Natural Selection“). Nyborg is well-known for his work showing a sex difference in IQ favoring males, a paper which resulted in an investigation of his work and a reprimand from his university. (Nyborg describes the “witch hunt” he endured here.)

Nyborg’s latest paper charts past trends and projects IQ changes in Denmark as a result of two trends: relaxation of natural selection among the traditional Danes, and an influx of low-IQ immigrants. These two trends together amount to what he terms a “double relaxation of natural selection” (DRNS).

Relying on Richard Lynn’s work Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, the relaxation of internal selection is thought to have begun around 1850 as the fertility of the lower classes exceeded the upper classes because of improvements in hygiene and reduction in diseases. He cites Lynn’s estimate that England lost 6.9 IQ points over 90 years (1920-2010) and estimates that Denmark’s average IQ dropped around 10 points since 1850 due to internal relaxation of natural selection.

However, the main point of the paper is to evaluate the influence of non-Western immigrant population on IQ. Nyborg estimates that by 2072 around 60% of births in Denmark will be to people of non-Western origin, and Danes will be a minority by 2085. This is due to markedly higher birth rates among non-Western immigrants and their descendants — nearly 4 times greater than the native Danes. Moreover, Nyborg projects that the low IQ (70–85) immigrant share of the population will grow steadily to nearly 60% of the share of all births by 2072.

This implies a drop in IQ for the entire population. Especially chilling is his Figure 5 which shows a dramatically increasing number of Danish citizens in the 70-85 IQ range. This IQ band is projected to be the majority of the population not long after 2075 and to dominate the school system by 2050.

The grim conclusion is that in the period from 1850 to 2072 there will be a total phenotypic decline of 15.39 IQ points. Given a heritability of 0.82 for IQ, this means genotypic damage of 12.62 IQ (i.e., 15.39 X .82) points from the internal relaxation of natural selection. Foreign immigration adds another 6 IQ points, including nearly 5 IQ points in genetic decline . The projection then is for an average population decline of around 21 IQ points and around 17 points in genetic potential for IQ since 1850.

Nyborg concludes:

Why were early dysgenic warnings neglected and the messengers demonized? Because too many leading scientists, politicians and intellectuals (Nyborg, 2003; in press) ignored Darwinian principles and started a historically hitherto unheard of voluntary, humanistic, democratic and financed replacement policy, whereby dwindling genetically weakened (Lynn, Harvey, & Nyborg, 2009) sub-fertile Western European populations will rapidly be replaced by more fertile low-IQ non-European immigrants. … The result is that Western European peoples become minorities in their own ancestral homelands before the end of the 21th century, and other modern societies undergo similar demographic transitions (see also Coleman, 2006, 2010).

Nyborg points out that this decline in IQ will have momentous effects on Western societies, including the decline of democratic governance and lowered economic output. But the Denmark conquered by these non-Western foreigners will be a shadow of its former self:

The damage implies that even if fertile low-IQ non-Western immigrants are the ultimate winners in the third demographic transition [i.e., the double relaxation of natural selection], they will conquer a lesser country. Danish average IQ will, for example, then have approached 90, or perhaps even be close to the projected mean immigrant of IQ 86. An intellectual corrosion this size will have undermined the economic and educational infra-structure of [Denmark], and ultimately made its democracy unsustainable. Another factor is the increased frequency of partly heritable antidemocratic attitudes, authoritarian culture, and dogmatic religious preferences, traits often seen in low-IQ countries. All this would seriously challenge the characteristic social coherence and solidarity of the Danish tribe. Tragically, the third demographic transition may also simultaneously damage the countries of origin, due to brain drain. In short, [the double relaxation of natural selection] may increasingly doom modern countries, harm developing countries, and has nothing to do with racism or nationalism.

Nyborg cautions that these projections may well be on the conservative side because they appear to underestimate future immigrant fertility because they don’t adequately take into account the youthful age of the immigrants. He also cites recent studies showing that the Lynn-Flynn effect has been reversed in Denmark and Norway. The Lynn-Flynn effect is the phenomenon increasing IQ’s resulting over historical time, resulting presumably from improved environments in the 20th century acting in opposite direction to the dysgenic effects of relaxed internal natural selection.

Four points: