---
title: "Race and intelligence"
chunk: 4/9
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:18:16.114269+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In the United States, Asians on average score higher than White people, who tend to score higher than Hispanics, who tend to score higher than African Americans. There is more variation in IQ scores within each racial group, such as when they are divided by income, than between different ethnic groups when compared as a whole against each other. A 2001 meta-analysis of the results of 6,246,729 participants tested for cognitive ability or aptitude found a difference in average scores between black people and white people of 1.1 standard deviations. Consistent results were found for college and university application tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (N = 2.4 million) and Graduate Record Examination (N = 2.3 million), as well as for tests of job applicants in corporate settings (N = 0.5 million) and in the military (N = 0.4 million).
In response to the controversial 1994 book The Bell Curve, the American Psychological Association (APA) formed a task-force of eleven experts, which issued a report "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" in 1996. Regarding group differences, the report reaffirmed the consensus that differences within groups are much wider than differences between groups, and that claims of ethnic differences in intelligence should be scrutinized carefully, as such claims had been used to justify racial discrimination. The report also acknowledged problems with the racial categories used, as these categories are neither consistently applied, nor homogeneous (see Race and ethnicity in the United States).
In the UK, some African groups have higher average educational attainment and standardized test scores than the overall population. In 2010–2011, white British pupils were 2.3% less likely to have gained 5 A*–C grades at GCSE than the national average, whereas the likelihood was 21.8% above average for those of Nigerian origin, 5.5% above average for those of Ghanaian origin, and 1.4% above average for those of Sierra Leonian origin. For the two other African ethnic groups on which data was available, the likelihood was 23.7% below average for those of Somali origin and 35.3% below average for those of Congolese origin. In 2014, Black-African pupils of 11 language groups were more likely to pass Key Stage 2 Maths 4+ in England than the national average. Overall, the average pass rate by ethnicity was 86.5% for white British (N = 395,787), whereas it was 85.6% for Black-Africans (N = 18,497). Nevertheless, several Black-African language groups, including Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Akan, Ga, Swahili, Edo, Ewe, Amharic speakers, and English-speaking Africans, each had an average pass rate above the white British average (total N = 9,314), with the Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba, and Amhara having averages above 90% (N = 2,071). In 2017–2018, the percentage of pupils getting a strong pass (grade 5 or above) in the English and maths GCSE (in Key Stage 4) was 42.7% for whites (N = 396,680) and 44.3% for Black-Africans (N = 18,358).

=== Flynn effect and the closing gap ===

The 'Flynn effect' — a term coined after researcher James R. Flynn — refers to the substantial rise in raw IQ test scores observed in many parts of the world during the 20th century. In the United States, the increase was continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to about 1998 when the gains stopped and some tests even showed decreasing test scores. For example, the average scores of black people on some IQ tests in 1995 were the same as the scores of white people in 1945. As one pair of academics phrased it, "the typical African American today probably has a slightly higher IQ than the grandparents of today's average white American."
Flynn himself argued that the dramatic changes having taken place between one just generation and the next pointed strongly at an environmental explanation, and that it is highly unlikely that genetic factors could have accounted for the increasing scores. The Flynn effect, along with Flynn's analysis, continues to hold significance in the context of the black/white IQ gap debate, demonstrating the potential for environmental factors to influence IQ test scores by as much as 1 standard deviation, a scale of change that had previously been doubted.
A distinct but related observation has been the gradual narrowing of the American black-white IQ gap in the last decades of the 20th century, as black test-takers increased their average scores relative to white test-takers. For instance, Vincent reported in 1991 that the black–white IQ gap was decreasing among children, but that it was remaining constant among adults. Similarly, a 2006 study by Dickens and Flynn estimated that the difference between mean scores of black people and white people closed by about 5 or 6 IQ points between 1972 and 2002, a reduction of about one-third. In the same period, the educational achievement disparity also diminished. Reviews by Flynn and Dickens, Mackintosh, and Nisbett et al. accept the gradual closing of the gap as a fact. Flynn and Dickens summarize this trend, stating, "The constancy of the Black-White IQ gap is a myth and therefore cannot be cited as evidence that the racial IQ gap is genetic in origin."

== Environmental factors ==

=== Health and nutrition ===