Does A Group Difference in Intelligence Exist?
One basic question to be answered in assessing a genetic explanation of unusual intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews is whether today's Ashkenazi Jews really do, as a group, have unusual intelligence. Assessing intelligence, especially of ethnic groups, is notoriously difficult and subject to racial and political biases.
One observational basis for inferring that Ashkenazi Jews have high intelligence is their prevalence in intellectually demanding fields. While Ashkenazi Jews make up only about 3% of the U.S. population and 0.2% of the world population, 27% of United States Nobel prize winners in the 20th century, a quarter of Fields Medal winners, 25% of ACM Turing Award winners, half the world's chess champions, and a quarter of Westinghouse Science Talent Search winners have Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. However, such statistics do not rule out factors other than intelligence, such as institutional biases and social networks.
A more direct approach is to measure intelligence with psychometric tests. Different studies have found different results, but most have found above-average verbal and mathematical intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews, along with below-average spatial intelligence. Some studies have found IQ scores amongst Ashkenazi Jews to be a fifth to one full standard deviation above average in mathematical and verbal tests.
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