Intelligence and childlessness.
TL;DR: Analyses of the National Child Development Study show that more intelligent men and women express preference to remain childless early in their reproductive careers, but only more intelligent women are more likely to remainChildless by the end of their reproductive career.
About: This article is published in Social Science Research.The article was published on 2014-11-01. It has received 46 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Childlessness & Population.
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TL;DR: A Treatise on the Family by G. S. Becker as discussed by the authors is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics.
Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …
4,817 citations
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TL;DR: This is a monumental study of the relatives of 289 persons who lived at Faribault Minnesota State Colony for the Retarded during the years 1911 to 1918—each retardate averaged 25 years of residential care within the institution.
Abstract: This is a monumental study of the relatives of 289 persons who lived at Faribault Minnesota State Colony for the Retarded during the years 1911 to 1918. Information about 82,217 persons is analyzed in this volume—each retardate averaged 25 years of residential care within the institution. The original study was developed in 1910 and was reopened in 1949 by the present investigators. I find it difficult to assess the value of this book for pediatricians. It is undoubtedly a very meaningful report for geneticists, but I would not recommend its purchase by the practicing pediatrician.
37 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the association between personality and childbearing motivation, with a focus on voluntary childlessness, and found that personality plays a considerable role in influencing individuals towards, or away from, parenthood.
Abstract: This study examined the association between personality and childbearing motivation, with a focus on voluntary childlessness. 780 adults completed an online survey assessing the Big Five personality traits, the trait of Independence, desire for parenthood, motivations for choosing childlessness and various other socio-demographic characteristics. Compared to parents or those desiring children, childfree respondents scored significantly higher in Independence and significantly lower in Agreeableness and Extraversion. They were also less religious and more politically liberal. For non-parents, level of desire for parenthood was negatively correlated with Independence and positively correlated with Agreeableness and religiosity. The ideal number of children desired was positively correlated with Agreeableness and religiosity. Childfree respondents who decided early in life not to have children (‘early articulators’) were significantly higher in Independence and Openness to Experience than those who decided later in life. Motivations for childlessness loaded onto five factors, four of which correlated significantly with personality traits. The results suggest that personality plays a considerable role in influencing individuals towards, or away from, parenthood.
32 citations
TL;DR: It has been theorized that declines in general intelligence (g) due to genetic selection stemming from the inverse association between completed fertility and IQ and the Flynn effect co-occur, with the effects of the latter being concentrated on less heritable non-g sources of intelligence variance.
Abstract: It has been theorized that declines in g due to negative selection stemming from the inverse association between completed fertility and IQ, and the Flynn effect co-occur, with the effects of the latter being concentrated on less-heritable non-g sources of intelligence variance. Evidence for this comes from the observation that 19th Century populations were more intellectually productive, and also exhibited faster simple reaction times than modern ones, suggesting higher g. This co-occurrence model is tested via examination of historical changes in the utilization frequencies of words from the highly g-loaded WORDSUM test across 5.9 million texts spanning 1850 to 2005. Consistent with predictions, words with higher difficulties (δ parameters from Item Response Theory) and stronger negative correlations between pass-rates and completed fertility presented a steeper decline in use over time, than less difficult and less negatively selected words, which increased in use over time, suggestive of a Flynn effect. These findings persisted when explicitly controlled for word age, literacy rates and temporal autocorrelation. These trends constitute compelling evidence that both producers and consumers of text have experienced declines in g since the mid-19th Century.
30 citations
Cites background from "Intelligence and childlessness."
...ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 21 April 2015 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00361 Edited by: J. Michael Williams, Drexel University, USA Reviewed by: Lei Chang, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, China David Geary, University of Missouri, USA *Correspondence: Michael A. Woodley of Menie, Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany; Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium michael.woodley@vub.ac.be Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Psychology and Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 21 January 2015 Accepted: 14 March 2015 Published: 21 April 2015 Citation: Woodley of Menie MA, Fernandes HBF, Figueredo AJ and Meisenberg G (2015) By their words ye shall know them: Evidence of genetic selection against general intelligence and concurrent environmental enrichment in vocabulary usage since the mid 19th century....
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...…Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium michael.woodley@vub.ac.be Specialty section: This article was submitted to Evolutionary Psychology and Neuroscience, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology Received: 21…...
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...…Galton’s (1869) predictions, asmost studies found that IQ was inversely related to fertility, suggesting directional genetic selection for lower intelligence (Lynn, 2011) – a trend that persists into the present (Lynn and van Court, 2004; Meisenberg, 2010; Reeve et al., 2013; Kanazawa, 2014)....
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TL;DR: The paper provides evidence for the validity of the regional IQs by showing that IQ estimates for UK nations derived from the same data are strongly correlated with national PISA scores, and finds that regional IQ is positively related to income, longevity and technological accomplishment; and is negatively related to poverty, deprivation and unemployment.
Abstract: Cross-regional correlations between average IQ and socioeconomic development have been documented in many different countries. This paper presents new IQ estimates for the twelve regions of the UK. These are weakly correlated (r=0.24) with the regional IQs assembled by Lynn (1979). Assuming the two sets of estimates are accurate and comparable, this finding suggests that the relative IQs of different UK regions have changed since the 1950s, most likely due to differentials in the magnitude of the Flynn effect, the selectivity of external migration, the selectivity of internal migration or the strength of the relationship between IQ and fertility. The paper provides evidence for the validity of the regional IQs by showing that IQ estimates for UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) derived from the same data are strongly correlated with national PISA scores (r=0.99). It finds that regional IQ is positively related to income, longevity and technological accomplishment; and is negatively related to poverty, deprivation and unemployment. A general factor of socioeconomic development is correlated with regional IQ at r=0.72.
29 citations
Cites background from "Intelligence and childlessness."
...Fourth, cross-regional differentials in the strength of the relationship between IQ and fertility (see Lynn & Van Court, 2004; Meisenberg, 2010; Lynn, 2011; Chen et al., 2013; Reeve et al., 2013; Kanazawa, 2014; Hopcraft, 2014; Woodley, 2015): fertility might have had a more positive genetic effect in some regions than in others....
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...…in the strength of the relationship between IQ and fertility (see Lynn & Van Court, 2004; Meisenberg, 2010; Lynn, 2011; Chen et al., 2013; Reeve et al., 2013; Kanazawa, 2014; Hopcraft, 2014; Woodley, 2015): fertility might have had a more positive genetic effect in some regions than in others....
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References
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TL;DR: It seems that there has been a change either in general societal pressures on the individual or in the style of teaching in schools - or both - favouring a lower level of processing of reality in the first three years of secondary education.
Abstract: Background Shayer, Ginsburg, and Coe (2007) showed that children leaving primary school in Y6 entered secondary school with much lower levels of understanding of the physical conservations than in 1976. It seemed desirable to investigate cognitive development in the first three years of secondary education.
Aims By using two Piagetian tests of formal operations, one of which had been used in the 1976 CSMS survey, the performance of Y8 and Y9 pupils would be compared with the survey results published in 1978.
Sample Eight schools were selected as willing to test their Y9 or Y8 classes on either the Pendulum (in 2007) or the Equilibrium in the Balance tests (in 2006), giving 39 classes on which to make the comparison with 1976 performance.
Method Regression of the pupils' class mean on each formal test on either the class's 2004 MidYIS or nferCAT standardized scores, and computing the regression at IQ = 100 allows comparison with that found in 1976.
Results On Equilibrium in the Balance the Y8 pupils were down on the proportion at the early formal level or above by −0.61 standard deviations (SD) for boys and −0.63 SD for girls on the 1976 results. On the Pendulum the Y9 boys were down by −0.49 SD and the girls by −0.48 SD on the proportion at the early formal level or above.
Conclusion The negative Flynn-effect found on Volume & Heaviness for Y7 pupils is paralleled by a similar negative effect on attainment of formal operations by Y8 and Y9, compared with 1976. Yet at the same time the proportion of pupils using the top level of concrete operational thinking has increased on both tests. It seems that there has been a change either in general societal pressures on the individual or in the style of teaching in schools – or both – favouring a lower level of processing of reality.
67 citations
TL;DR: Using a representative sample of about 17,000 ever-married women 15-44 years of age, this article presents national estimates of the prevalence and correlates of voluntary, involuntary, and temporary childlessness in the United States.
Abstract: Using a representative sample of about 17,000 ever-married women 15-44 years of age, this article presents national estimates of the prevalence and correlates of voluntary, involuntary, and temporary childlessness in the United States. These three groups of childless couples are compared with the parents of small planned families and other parents on a number of social, economic, marital, and family characteristics. When viewed cross-sectionally, voluntarily childless couples constitute between 1.3% and 1.8% of currently married couples, depending on the definitions used. They are a distinctive but rare population. Their future prevalence depends primarily on the decisions of the large group of temporarily childless couples.
63 citations
"Intelligence and childlessness." refers background in this paper
...A large number of past studies have shown that more educated women are more likely to remain childless for life (Bloom and Trussell, 1984; Jacobson and Heaton, 1991; Kiernan, 1989; Mosher and Bachrach, 1982; Poston and Kramer, 1986; see Bloom and Pebley, 1982 for review)....
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TL;DR: The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values as discussed by the authors.
63 citations
01 Jan 1998
62 citations
"Intelligence and childlessness." refers background in this paper
...Although there is no consensus on what caused the Lynn-Flynn Effect (Neisser, 1998), one likely candidate is the increasing levels of infant and childhood nutrition and health (Lynn, 1990, 1998)....
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TL;DR: Findings linking education and cognitive ability as predictors of female age at first birth (AFB) using monozygotic and dizygotic female twin pairs from the Middle‐Aged Danish Twin survey are replicated.
Abstract: The authors study education and cognitive ability as predictors of female age at first birth (AFB), using monozygotic and dizygotic female twin pairs from the Middle‐Aged Danish Twin survey. Using mediated regression, they replicate findings linking education (and not cognitive ability) to AFB. But in a behavior genetic model, both relationships are absorbed within a latent variable measuring the shared family environment. Two interpretations are relevant. First, variance in AFB emerges from differences between families, not differences between sisters within the same family. Second, even in a natural laboratory sensitive to genetic variance in female fertility—during demographic transition—the variance in AFB was nongenetic, located instead within the shared environment.
61 citations
"Intelligence and childlessness." refers background in this paper
...I therefore do not control for respondents’ race in my analysis of the NCDS data....
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...Rodgers et al. (2008) show that intelligence net of education has no effect on age at first birth among female Danish twins in the Middle-Aged Danish Twin survey, and Neiss et al. (2002) reach a similar conclusion in their behavior genetic analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979....
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...…of the Armed Forces Qualification Test (arithmetic, word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, and mathematics knowledge), and the Middle-Aged Danish Twin survey (Rodgers et al., 2008) uses five (fluency, digit-span forward, digit-span backward, digit symbol substitution, and delayed recall)....
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