The following map shows mean average IQ by state using 2013 NAEP scores from eighth graders in math and reading: And this map shows the average credit scores by state, according to 2017 data from VantageScores: Despite the War on Noticing, indefatigably astute readers will detect a similarity between the maps. This is on account... Read More

Trump, the ultimate conversation starter, adds a couple more stories to the the yuge Overton Window he's building:

Seeing figures on the median income range required for households to fall between 66 percent and 200 percent of each state's median income (via Jayman) set me thinking about differences in monetary standards of living across the US. Due to the wide variations in costs of living across different regions, income figures alone provide an... Read More

The inverse correlation between mean white IQ (as estimated by NAEP scores) and the white homicide offender rate at the state level in the US is a statistically significant .67 (p = 0).A few technical notes: Florida is excluded for lack of adequate FBI uniform crime reporting data. "White" includes Hispanics who racially identify as... Read More

Pew recently published a report accompanied by a press release that highlights the recent growth in the ratio of the median wealth of white households relative to that of black and Hispanic households. As of 2009, the median white household's net worth was 20 times that of blacks. Just four years prior, the multiple had... Read More

In a recent EconTalk podcast, host Russ Roberts had Stanford's Paul Romer on to talk about the latter's ideas about what he calls "charter cities". Romer explains that Haitians are miserable because they live under terrible rules. He suggests letting them seek out 'charter cities'--something akin to Singapore with a suzerainty and guarantor of laws... Read More

In February 19th's Radio Derb podcast, John Derbyshire commented on a recent Gallup poll concerning the percentage of adults in a state expressing satisfaction at their individual standard-of-livings (explicitly, "all the things you can do and buy"):I'm always interested in state-by-state comparisons, as there is an enormous amount of data available at that level for... Read More

A commenter at Mangan's named Chris looked at the correlation between the per capita illegal immigrant population and the foreclosure rate by state and found a correlation of .68. Using his population figures (accessible here) and the foreclosure or preforeclosure rates from a data-rich paper out of the University of Virginia yields a slightly stronger... Read More

++Addition++Dr. Bruce G. Charlton points to a paper by Prokosch, Yeo, and Miller showing that body symmetry measurements correlate with scores on three of four g-loaded tests on a study of 78 men, the strongest relationship (r=.39) being with Ravens Matrices. To my relief, hair recession in the temple regions was not one of the... Read More

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has voted to further limit personal behavioral choices: Because the madness of the Sunday morning rush hour simply makes hula-hooping an impossibility! These moves strike me as self-preserving. Liberal leftism is most viable in a high IQ, industrious population whose members have a meaningful stake in their society. Make... Read More

Using an impressively detailed report from the CIS, I came up with a merit index for immigrants to the US by country of origin based on six factors: The percentage using one or more welfare programs, % self-employed, % lacking health insurance, % having graduated from high school or an educational equivalent, % having attained... Read More

Tangentially related to the last post, for guys like Dennis Mangan who've been toying with the idea of leaving California, I'm familiar with the county Forbes recently listed as the third best of the nation's 3,141 to raise a family* and would be happy to play tour guide and real estate counselor for those interested... Read More

++Addition++The racial percentages have been adjusted slightly thanks to astute commentary. Please see the explanation at the end of this post.---CNN and Money magazine just announced the 100 best small cities in the US to live in. With populations of 50,000-300,000, most cities in major metropolitan areas that border the major city that anchors the... Read More

Randall Parker reports on an article by Steven Malanga on identity theft and illegal immigration. Malanga points out that the "epidemic" rise in ID theft has paralleled the rise in the number of immigrants (specifically illegal immigrants) in the US. Citizens who share their state with lots of immigrants are at the greatest risk of... Read More

Concluding the Pew report (pg 36) on the US prison population is a graph depicting incarceration rates for selected countries. The US is situated on top, with a rate of 750 people per 100,000 locked up. In a distant second is Russia, with 628 per. The rest of the countries listed, with the exception of... Read More

One of the recurring topics here is the relationship between IQ and, well, virtually everything that is desirable--a higher material standard of living, greater livability (as measured by a set of 44 variables like average educational attainment and libraries per capita), longer life expectancy, greater physical health, relative income equality and more total wealth, lower... Read More

New Jersey's Senate majority leader is encouraged by Arizona's tough sanctions on illegal immigrants and companies employing them: Even before the Arizona law went into effect, hundreds of illegal immigrants were heading to other states and back to their countries of origin by the day. In Oklahoma, which passed similar measures that will come online... Read More

Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen has given the city the green light to start turning off the red lights: If the city authorities have their way, the widely sold tourist T-shirt proclaiming that "Good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to Amsterdam" will become a relic. Indeed, those bad boys may soon struggle to... Read More

With the Flynn effect at the fore of the blogosphere, I wonder if the reduction in the common use of lead in paint, gasoline, candles, sulder, and the like offers any explanation. It seems initially plausible. Richard Nevin, who also sees lead reduction as an explanation for a decrease in the US homicide rate, is... Read More

A state's live-in desirability, as defined by CQ Press in the form of a livability index that considers 44 social, cultural, and economic factors, rigorously correlates with that state's estimated average IQ. The correlation using my numbers is .78, while using VCU Professor McDaniel's subsequent better numbers yields an r-value of .80. In both cases,... Read More

Humans are social creatures. Our desire to fit in has obvious evolutionary and sociological advantages. That can be for better or worse. Jumping off a cliff, not so good. Respecting yourself because of Alicia Silverstone's portrayed self-respect, better. Our girth may be similarly open to peer influence: The cause-or-effect question is relevant here. Tubsters are... Read More

Getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic isn't inevitable, at least not to the degree that it currently occurs. Fat Knowledge reports that the Federal Highway Administration has found that 5%-10% of delays on the nation's highways are a direct result of poorly-timed traffic signals, translating into an extra 295.8 million traffic hours (per year, presumably). That's... Read More