Written by Noah Carl.
We know there is a strong correlation between average test scores and wealth across countries. This has been shown by intelligence researchers using Richard Lynn’s national IQs, and by economists using data from student assessment studies.1 The question is why?
Hereditarians argue that nations differ in their average genotypic IQ, and those with higher average IQs have been able to build larger, more productive economies. They acknowledge there are outliers: China is believed to have a high average IQ, but does not have a particularly high GDP per capita because its growth was hampered for several decades by communism. Hereditarians also acknowledge that environmental factors like education, nutrition and familiarity with testing explain some of the variation in average IQ. But they maintain that most of the causality is from test scores to wealth.
Environmentalists, by contrast, dispute that genes play any significant role in cross-national IQ differences. (And some insist it is “racist” to even suggest such a thing.) They argue that some countries happened to get rich for complex historical reasons, and this enables them to create more cognitively enriching environments. Rich countries have succeeded in eradicating infectious diseases, providing high-quality nutrition to their citizens, and developing advanced education systems. Environmentalists thus maintain that most or all the causality is from wealth to test scores.
One way to adjudicate between these theories is to look for exogenous sources of wealth. Are there any countries that got rich for reasons that were largely random and had nothing to do with their genes? Yes, the Gulf monarchies. Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia are much wealthier than other Arab nations, mostly because of sheer luck—their territories just happened to contain vast quantities of easily exploitable oil and gas.
If environmentalists are right, their average test scores should be considerably higher than those of their poorer Arab neighbours. But if hereditarians are right, their test scores should be about the same.
Fortunately, all three of the aforementioned countries—Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia—took part in the latest PISA study. And so did four other Arab states to which we can compare them (Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Morocco).
When doing this comparison, it’s important to use the scores for “non-immigrant students”, rather than “all students”. Why? As the PISA documentation indicates, 62% of the students in Qatar and 57% of those in UAE are immigrants, and they score substantially higher than the natives. These immigrants are the children of wealthy expats from Asia, the West and other parts of the Middle East.2 They are therefore not representative of native ability, and their inclusion would obviously distort the comparison.3
The chart below plots average PISA scores among natives against GDP per capita.4 The y-axis is scaled so that the minimum is roughly equal to the average for the lowest scoring country (Rwanda) and the maximum is roughly equal to the average for the highest scoring country (coastal China).
As you can see, there is only a very weak relationship between average test scores and wealth across these seven Arab countries—despite massive differences in wealth.
Remarkably, Qatar’s average score is slightly lower than Lebanon’s, even though Qatar is more than ten times richer and has not been racked by war and ethnic conflict. (Qataris are among the most pampered people on the planet.) This isn’t because Lebanese do particularly well. You can see from the scale on the y-axis that they do quite badly, scoring about a standard deviation below native Europeans.5
It’s true that the West Bank and Morocco score somewhat lower than the other five countries, and they are both relatively poor—especially the West Bank. So there is evidence that wealth makes some difference. However, it clearly doesn’t make a big difference.6 And we know that Qatar’s and UAE’s low scores can’t be down to some quirk of their education systems, since immigrants in those countries do well.
Despite enjoying some of the world’s highest living standards thanks to lucrative oil and gas sales, the Gulf monarchies have not been able to boost their school performance substantially above that of lower-middle-income countries like Lebanon. Which suggests that most of the causality is from test scores to wealth, rather than the other way around.
Noah Carl is an Editor of Aporia.
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Intelligence researchers have also incorporated data from student assessment studies into their analyses.
According to the PISA documentation, they have very high average SES. For example, immigrants in UAE have higher average SES than natives in Norway.
Another issue is that many of the immigrants in Jordan and Lebanon are Syrian refugees who score lower than the natives (most likely due to a combination of factors). Immigrants comprise 12% and 16% of test-takers in those two countries.
An average was taken across science, reading and mathematics scores. GDP per capita in 2024 was taken from Our World in Data.
Jordan too does marginally better than Qatar.
Fitting a line to these seven points implies that $100,000 in additional GDP per capita will improve your country’s average score by just 22% of a standard deviation (roughly the difference between Finland and Norway).
Very interesting article
South Korea was a poor country in the 1950's and a very rich country in 2026. One is going to have to some heavy lifting, figuratively, to show the increase wealth is due to increasing IQ instead of changing economic conditions driven by outside forces.