You mention that anything that smells of eugenics is going to be a hard sell, politically, and I suspect you’re right. However, at least in the US there is similar political issue that is politically tractable.
As you point out, higher IQ people are more likely to have higher wages. Conversely, people with full-time employment are more likely to be high IQ than people without (I can look up the source if you want; I think it was in Murray). And IQ is strongly heritable (around 0.5). So a policy that prevented higher IQ people from having children would be dysgenics—it would lower average IQ. Conversely, removing such a policy would have a positive effect.
The recent controversial healthcare reform law (Obamacare) contains a clause that forces private employers to pay for their full-time employees’ contraception. Presumably providing this contraception will those full-time employees to have fewer children, and is thus an example of the sort of dysgenic policy described in the previous paragraph. Part of this controversial clause has already been struck down. Given the high level of political support for repealing or reforming Obamacare, revoking the contraception mandate could be a politically viable policy to increase long-run IQ.
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You mention that anything that smells of eugenics is going to be a hard sell, politically, and I suspect you’re right. However, at least in the US there is similar political issue that is politically tractable.
As you point out, higher IQ people are more likely to have higher wages. Conversely, people with full-time employment are more likely to be high IQ than people without (I can look up the source if you want; I think it was in Murray). And IQ is strongly heritable (around 0.5). So a policy that prevented higher IQ people from having children would be dysgenics—it would lower average IQ. Conversely, removing such a policy would have a positive effect.
The recent controversial healthcare reform law (Obamacare) contains a clause that forces private employers to pay for their full-time employees’ contraception. Presumably providing this contraception will those full-time employees to have fewer children, and is thus an example of the sort of dysgenic policy described in the previous paragraph. Part of this controversial clause has already been struck down. Given the high level of political support for repealing or reforming Obamacare, revoking the contraception mandate could be a politically viable policy to increase long-run IQ.