The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray
Themes: cognitive ability, inequality, United States
This book was co-authored by Richard Herrnstein, a behavioral psychologist at Harvard University and Charles Murray, a political/social scientist at the American Enterprise Institute. The main thesis of the book was that cognitive ability is an important determinant of individual performance on various measures, including both positives and negatives. Smarter people generally earn more, live more prosperous lives, and are less likely to fall for a life of crime. Murray and Herrnstein argued that cognitive ability was more important than parental socio-economic status as a determinant of many of these social indicators. In the later part of the book, they discussed potential policy implications. However, they generally kept the policy implications separate from the basic analysis. The data they drew upon was that of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) up to about 1990.
The book made it to Bryan Caplan’s book list and Will Wilkinson’s book list. For some additional background reading on the theory of cognitive ability and its social implications, refer to Why g matters by Linda Gottfredson and her other writings.
Much of the criticism of the book was focused on the issue of a possible corelation between race and IQ, raised in a small portion of the book. Murray and Herrnstein did not draw definitive conclusions, and to the best of my knowledge, their discussion included most of the important references, and their conclusions were in line with the Snyderman and Rothman (study). A signed statement by 52 intelligence researchers, called Mainstream Science of Intelligence (PDF), as well as a 1996 task force report of the American Psychological Association, confirmed most of the broad assertions of the Bell Curve.
Reason Magazine published a critical review of the book by James Heckman of the University of Chicago. VDARE published a positive review by Steve Sailer on the ten-year anniversary of the book. Thomas Sowell published a partly critical review of the book (that is not available online to my knowledge).
For fun: NPR interviews Barack Obama on te Bell Curve (1994).
