Busting the Bell Curve (fwd)
Peter Smagorinsky (psmagorinsky who-is-at ou.edu)
Thu, 06 Nov 1997 10:46:45
>Busting the Bell Curve
>
> A new study examining verbal ability and socioeconomic success
>casts doubt on theories advanced in the controversial 1994 book The Bell
Curve.
>
> The study, published in the September 1997 issue of Social Science
>Research, found that cognitive ability - or a person's academic ability -
>has not created growing differences among socioeconomic classes in the
>United States, as argued by The Bell Curve authors, Charles Murray and the
>late Richard Herrnstein.
>
> Murray and Herrnstein contend in The Bell Curve that a person's IQ largely
>determines their socioeconomic status, that IQ differences in race are
>partly genetic and that African-Americans generally have lower IQs than
>whites or Asians. A growing number of scholars are disputing their findings.
>
> "We would not for a moment deny cognitive ability an important place in the
>stratification process, but that place appears to be limited mainly to its
>role in determining how far people go in school, and that role appears to
>have been pretty much the same throughout this century," write the study's
>authors, Robert M. Hauser and Min-Hsiung Huang of the Center for Demography
>and Ecology at UWisconsin-Madison.
>
> "Our findings suggest that, if there is a key variable in the American
>class system, it is educational attainment, not cognitive ability," add
>Hauser, a professor of sociology at UW-Madison, and Huang, of the Institute
>for European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. The
>authors say the distribution of schooling has become more equal throughout
>this century.
>
> Hauser and Huang examined the claims made in The Bell Curve along with data
>from a short verbal test administered to about 12,500 adults nearly every
>year between 1974 and 1994 as part of the General Social Survey of the
>National Opinion Research Center.
>
> Using the verbal test data, they analyzed how social background and
>educational attainment affect verbal ability and how verbal ability affects
>occupational status and income. In all cases, they found little or no
>evidence that the effects of verbal ability on socioeconomic outcomes have
>increased in the past two decades.
>
> "Herrnstein and Murray have offered precious little evidence to support
>their story line, and we find equally little support in the trend data from
>the General Social Survey," Hauser and Huang write.
>
> The authors discovered that there has been almost no change in how social
>background influences verbal ability, except for a declining negative effect
>on those born in the South or on farms. And they found few differences in
>verbal ability between high school graduates and college graduates born
>since the Great Depression, which they say reflects a combination of larger
>postsecondary enrollments and more relaxed college admission standards.
>
> Hauser and Huang also determined that there were no changes in the effects
>of verbal ability on occupational status between the 1970s and the 1990s,
>except for small decreases among African-American men, white men younger
>than 45 and middle-aged white women. Effects of ability on occupational
>status did increase some for older white women, they found.
>
> There were no changes in the effects of verbal ability on earnings as well,
>according to the study. Hauser and Huang say their analyses show that verbal
>ability affects a person's income primarily through their level of education.
>
> The authors admit that data from the General Social Survey does have
>weaknesses, including the narrow content of the verbal test, that it has no
>measure of childhood ability and that it doesn't represent either very
>wealthy or very poor sections of the American population in substantial
numbers.
>
> But they emphasize that the survey's verbal test offers consistent data
>because it was administered regularly over a 20-year period. And they add
>that the survey obtained standardized, measurable information on social
>background and socioeconomic outcomes.
>
>
>Martin Nystrand
>Professor, Department of English
>Director, Center on English Learning and Achievement (CELA)
>Wisconsin Center for Education Research
>685 Education Sciences
>1025 West Johnson Street
>Madison WI 53706
>608 263-0563 voice
>608 263-6448 fax
>
>
>