The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

The seminal book about IQ and class that ignited one of the most explosive controversies in decades, now updated with a new Afterword by Charles Murray

Breaking new ground and old taboos, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray tell the story of a society in transformation. At the top, a cognitive elite is forming in which the passkey to the best schools and the best jobs is no longer social background but high intelligence. At the bottom, the common denominator of the underclass is increasingly low intelligence rather than racial or social disadvantage.

The Bell Curve describes the state of scientific knowledge about questions that have been on people's minds for years but have been considered too sensitive to talk about openly — among them, IQ's relationship to crime, unemployment, welfare, child neglect, poverty, and illegitimacy; ethnic differences in intelligence; trends in fertility among women of different levels of intelligence; and what policy can do — and cannot do — to compensate for differences in intelligence. Brilliantly argued and meticulously documented, The Bell Curve is the essential first step in coming to grips with the nation's social problems.

Breaking new ground and old taboos, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray tell the story of a society in transformation. At the top, a cognitive elite is forming in which the passkey to the best schools and the best jobs is no longer social background but high intelligence. At the bottom, the common denominator of the underclass is increasingly low intelligence rather than racial or social disadvantage.

The Bell Curve describes the state of scientific knowledge about questions that have been on people's minds for years but have been considered too sensitive to talk about openly — among them, IQ's relationship to crime, unemployment, welfare, child neglect, poverty, and illegitimacy; ethnic differences in intelligence; trends in fertility among women of different levels of intelligence; and what policy can do — and cannot do — to compensate for differences in intelligence. Brilliantly argued and meticulously documented, The Bell Curve is the essential first step in coming to grips with the nation's social problems.

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

A Note to the Reader

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I.

THE EMERGENCE OF A COGNITIVE ELITE

1 Cognitive Class and Education, 1900-1990

2 Cognitive Partitioning by Occupation

3 The Economic Pressure to Partition

4 Steeper Ladders, Narrower Gates

PART II.

COGNITIVE CLASSES AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

5 Poverty

6 Schooling

7 Unemployment, Idleness, and Injury

8 Family Matters

9 Welfare Dependency

10 Parenting

11 Crime

12 Civility and Citizenship

PART III.

THE NATIONAL CONTEXT

13 Ethnic Differences in Cognitive Ability

14 Ethnic Inequalities in Relation to IQ

15 The Demography of Intelligence

16 Social Behavior and the Prevalence of Low Cognitive Ability

PART IV.

LIVING TOGETHER

17 Raising Cognitive Ability

18 The Leveling of American Education

19 Affirmative Action in Higher Education

20 Affirmative Action in the Workplace

21 The Way We Are Headed

22 A Place for Everyone

Afterworld

APPENDIXES

1 Statistics for People Who Are Sure They Can't Learn Statistics

2 Technical Issues Regarding the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

3 Technical Issues Regarding the Armed Forces Qualification Test as a Measure of IQ

4 Regression Analyses (rom Part II

5 Supplemental Material for Chapter 13

6 Regression Analyses from Chapter 14

7 The Evolution of Affirmative Action in the Workplace

Notes

Bibliography

Index