Dysgenics - Dysgenics For Other Traits

Dysgenics For Other Traits

In 1996, Richard Lynn wrote Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations. He identified three main concerns of eugenicists, such as himself: deterioration in health, intelligence and conscientiousness. Lynn argued that natural selection in pre-industrial societies favored traits such as intelligence and character but no longer does so in modern societies.

Lynn in a 1995 study of a sample of British criminal convicts found that they had an average fertility of 3.91 children. The general population had an average fertility of 2.1.

Other works by the Lynn have been described as distorting and misrepresenting data although others have favorably reviewed Lynn's work on dysgenics.

The word "dysgenic" was first used, as an adjective, about 1915, by David Starr Jordan, describing the dysgenic effect of World War I. Jordan believed that healthy men were as likely to die in modern warfare as anyone else, and that war killed only the physically healthy men of the populace whilst preserving the disabled at home.