Education’s economic payoff has little to do with measured IQ for most people

Evidence

More surprising, perhaps, for the bulk of the population, the dollar payoff to increased education— while strongly dependent on race and sex— is related to IQ only tenuously, if at all. Thus the standard educational practice of using IQ and test scores as a criterion for access to higher educational levels has little merit in terms of economic (not to men­ tion educational) rationality and efficiency, except perhaps for the extremes of the IQ-distribution curve. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 213

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader sociology-of-education literature (e.g. credentialism/screening theory) and Bowles’ own later work arguing schools reproduce inequality through non-cognitive traits. — connects to: Family background’s effect on schooling barely runs through IQ, not through measured ability — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 429; Schools’ main economic function is not cognitive skill production — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 996; Controlling for IQ barely weakens the link between education and income — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1028 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Cognitive skills explain little of education’s link to economic success. #corroborates (0.92) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 556
• Class-based educational inequality persists almost unchanged when IQ is held constant #corroborates (0.75)
• Education’s economic function operates through personality formation, not skills #expands (0.72) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 214