Tapsearch Com EditorDoes IQ explain the college gender gap?
March 27th 2007 22:25
This Reason blog post got me to thinking. There is a significant gender gap in our nation's colleges, with females making up 57.2 percent of enrollees. I think the IQ distribution might play some small role in that.
To start off, there are a lot of things that probably affect it more. There's the whole "war on boys" thing about schools not playing to male strengths, the fact that men can easier make a living at manual labor and so have more alternatives to college, and the sheer abundance of testosterone that makes even intelligent men screw their futures up. Heck, simple numbers do some good, as 50.7 percent of Americans are women.
Anyhow, the basic fact here is that male IQs are more variable than female IQs. That is, there are more male geniuses than female geniuses, and also more male criminals, dropouts, etc. There are more females with average, slightly above average and slightly below average IQs. Put simply, women's scores cluster more closely around the mean IQ.
Here's my idea: About 63 percent of high school graduates enroll in college immediately. Something like 13 percent of high schoolers don't graduate to begin with (I used the Census data on high-school-graduates-plus for 20-to-24-year-olds), so 55 in every 100 young people go to college (63 percent * [100-13] percent).
That means pretty much anyone with an above-average IQ can go if they want to and can afford it. Men and women have the same average IQ, so half of men and half of women fall into this category. More men than women might opt for non-college jobs even in this cohort, but I'd think this would roughly cancel out with the fact more men than women would fall into the super-high-IQ category that almost always goes to college.
However, even if every single person of average-and-up intelligence attended college, 5 in every 55 college students would have below-average IQs -- almost certainly slightly-below-average IQs. Who are these people? Disproportionately women. Depending on just how many in every 55 students come from this group (significantly more than 5, I'm sure, but I have no clue how to guess how many more), it could explain a good chunk of the discrepancy.
This works well in terms of the general population, but it hits a major snag with minorities. Blacks and Hispanics have below-average mean IQs, so more men than women in these groups have IQs above 100. But in minorities, the college gender gap is more, not less, pronounced in favor of women. I'd suspect there are cultural and economic factors at work here, with women less likely to give into the temptations (disproportionate) urban poverty proposes them.
By Robert VerBruggen
To start off, there are a lot of things that probably affect it more. There's the whole "war on boys" thing about schools not playing to male strengths, the fact that men can easier make a living at manual labor and so have more alternatives to college, and the sheer abundance of testosterone that makes even intelligent men screw their futures up. Heck, simple numbers do some good, as 50.7 percent of Americans are women.
Anyhow, the basic fact here is that male IQs are more variable than female IQs. That is, there are more male geniuses than female geniuses, and also more male criminals, dropouts, etc. There are more females with average, slightly above average and slightly below average IQs. Put simply, women's scores cluster more closely around the mean IQ.
Here's my idea: About 63 percent of high school graduates enroll in college immediately. Something like 13 percent of high schoolers don't graduate to begin with (I used the Census data on high-school-graduates-plus for 20-to-24-year-olds), so 55 in every 100 young people go to college (63 percent * [100-13] percent).
That means pretty much anyone with an above-average IQ can go if they want to and can afford it. Men and women have the same average IQ, so half of men and half of women fall into this category. More men than women might opt for non-college jobs even in this cohort, but I'd think this would roughly cancel out with the fact more men than women would fall into the super-high-IQ category that almost always goes to college.
However, even if every single person of average-and-up intelligence attended college, 5 in every 55 college students would have below-average IQs -- almost certainly slightly-below-average IQs. Who are these people? Disproportionately women. Depending on just how many in every 55 students come from this group (significantly more than 5, I'm sure, but I have no clue how to guess how many more), it could explain a good chunk of the discrepancy.
This works well in terms of the general population, but it hits a major snag with minorities. Blacks and Hispanics have below-average mean IQs, so more men than women in these groups have IQs above 100. But in minorities, the college gender gap is more, not less, pronounced in favor of women. I'd suspect there are cultural and economic factors at work here, with women less likely to give into the temptations (disproportionate) urban poverty proposes them.
By Robert VerBruggen
| 48 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Hell, even high-IQ men are competitively smart, like it's a sport.