Sample sizes are not sufficient for statistical significance for a host of job categories (as long as the respondent pool is plural, it is included), and the usual disclaimer about a ten question vocabulary test not correlating perfectly with IQ (Razib reports an r-value of .71) applies. Women tend to do slightly better on verbal measures of intelligence, while men do better on quantitative measures of the same. Calculated from wordsum scores, women enjoy a bit less than a 2 point IQ advantage over men, so heavily female occupations like teaching are slightly overstated and heavily male occupations like those involving engineering are similarly understated. To avoid issues of English language proficiency, only those born in the US are included. Because a perfect score translates to an IQ of 128, high-end wordsum scorers encounter an artificial ceiling on their purported IQ. So, to a much lesser extent, do low-end scorers, as missing all ten items corresponds to an estimated IQ of 53. Consequently, the table is merely suggestive, not definitive or statistically rigorous:
| Occupation | IQ | n |
| 1. Mathematician | 117.1 | 4 |
| 2. Physician | 117.0 | 48 |
| 3. Geologist | 116.7 | 5 |
| 4. Meteorologist | 116.7 | 2 |
| 5. College professor | 115.9 | 89 |
| 6. Author | 115.1 | 58 |
| 7. Librarian | 114.6 | 28 |
| 8. Attorney | 114.5 | 102 |
| 9. Biologist | 113.7 | 8 |
| 10. Optometrist | 112.9 | 3 |
| 11. Statistician | 111.4 | 2 |
| 12. Computer systems analyst | 111.3 | 85 |
| 13. Judge | 111.0 | 3 |
| 14. Psychologist | 110.3 | 20 |
| 14. Actor | 110.3 | 20 |
| 14. Dentist | 110.3 | 16 |
| 14. Chemist | 110.3 | 11 |
| 18. Museum curator | 110.1 | 4 |
| 19. Clergyman | 108.9 | 38 |
| 20. Pharmacist | 108.7 | 11 |
| 21. Teacher | 108.1 | 297 |
| 22. Agronomist | 107.9 | 6 |
| 22. Electrical engineer | 107.9 | 46 |
| 24. Stockbroker | 107.8 | 31 |
| 25. Fine artist | 107.4 | 33 |
| 26. Physical therapist | 107.4 | 40 |
| 26. Sociologist | 107.4 | 4 |
| 28. Economist | 106.6 | 21 |
| 29. Mechanical engineer | 106.5 | 35 |
| 29. Architect | 106.5 | 26 |
| 31. Real estate agent | 105.7 | 80 |
| 32. Commercial airline pilot | 105.6 | 12 |
| 33. Dental hygienist | 105.5 | 33 |
| 34. Social worker | 105.0 | 109 |
| 35. Registered nurse | 104.9 | 238 |
| 36. Stenographer | 104.6 | 44 |
| 37. Government official | 104.1 | 77 |
| 37. Insurance agent | 104.1 | 77 |
| 37. Computer programmer | 104.1 | 41 |
| 40. Accountant | 104.1 | 168 |
| 41. Civil engineer | 104.0 | 23 |
| 42. Undertaker | 103.6 | 8 |
| 43. Jeweler | 103.2 | 5 |
| 44. Secretary | 103.1 | 430 |
| 45. Engineering technician | 102.6 | 55 |
| 46. Police officer | 102.5 | 81 |
| 47. Industrial machine repairer | 102.4 | 9 |
| 47. Photographic process worker | 102.4 | 6 |
| 49. Debt collector | 101.7 | 10 |
| 50. Sales representative | 101.6 | 134 |
| 50. Compositor/typesetter | 101.6 | 8 |
| 52. Fashion designer | 101.4 | 7 |
| 53. Photographer | 100.8 | 19 |
| 54. Receptionist | 100.8 | 104 |
| 55. Machine tool operator | 100.6 | 7 |
| 56. Veterinarian | 100.4 | 5 |
| 57. Communications equipment mechanic | 100.2 | 9 |
| 57. Broadcast technician | 100.2 | 9 |
| 59. Glazier | 99.3 | 3 |
| 60. Mail carrier | 99.1 | 68 |
| 61. Retail salesperson | 99.0 | 368 |
| 62. Telephone operator | 98.7 | 41 |
| 63. Dressmaker | 98.4 | 18 |
| 64. Bank teller | 97.8 | 67 |
| 65. Licensed practical nurse | 97.5 | 73 |
| 66. Plumber | 97.3 | 66 |
| 67. Maid | 97.1 | 107 |
| 68. Waiter/bartender | 96.5 | 289 |
| 69. Aircraft mechanic | 96.3 | 21 |
| 70. Barber | 96.2 | 117 |
| 71. Data entry clerk | 96.0 | 53 |
| 72. Carpet and tile installer | 95.8 | 143 |
| 72. Painter | 95.8 | 51 |
| 74. Child care worker | 95.4 | 181 |
| 75. Tool maker | 95.3 | 53 |
| 76. Telephone installer/repairer | 95.1 | 10 |
| 77. Security guard | 95.0 | 26 |
| 78. Farmer | 94.7 | 11 |
| 79. Bus driver | 94.6 | 45 |
| 79. Firefighter | 94.6 | 42 |
| 81. Insulation installer | 93.9 | 5 |
| 82. Cashier | 93.8 | 290 |
| 83. Furniture upholsterer | 93.7 | 13 |
| 84. Electrician | 93.6 | 66 |
| 85. Taxi driver | 93.5 | 76 |
| 86. Bookbinder | 93.0 | 5 |
| 87. Welder | 92.7 | 63 |
| 88. Automobile mechanic | 91.6 | 131 |
| 89. Dietitian | 91.5 | 9 |
| 90. Truck driver | 90.6 | 216 |
| 91. Railroad conductor | 90.4 | 7 |
| 91. Sailor | 90.4 | 3 |
| 93. Bricklayer | 90.3 | 22 |
| 94. Cook | 90.3 | 140 |
| 95. Construction worker | 90.0 | 139 |
| 96. Roofer | 89.3 | 16 |
| 97. Sheet metal worker | 88.5 | 44 |
| 98. Carpenter | 87.4 | 3 |
| 99. Janitor | 86.9 | 82 |
| 100. Drill-press operator | 86.7 | 2 |
| 101. Forklift operator | 85.8 | 42 |
| 102. Butcher | 84.3 | 21 |
| 103. Concrete worker | 82.9 | 8 |
| 103. Surveyor | 82.9 | 2 |
| 105. Shoe maker/cobbler | 79.6 | 6 |
| 106. Lumberjack | 75.3 | 8 |
GSS variables used: ISCO88, WORDSUM, BORN(1)
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14 comments:
These results make me skeptical of GSS wordsum as a good proxy for IQ. I have a hard time believing EEs and MEs have average IQs below 110 or even below 115. The scores of commercial airline pilots and RNs seem too low as well.
I think of La Griffe Du Lion's Smart Fraction Theory cut-off around 106 for people who contribute to a higher per capita income. Difficult jobs are above that level.
Of course there's just an n=2, but there is no way in creation that a person with a score of 82.9 could function as a surveyor. And 100.4 for a veterinarian simply boggles the mind.
Peter
Futurepundit,
Well, a vocabulary test is going understate the IQs of engineers (and presumably, mathematicians, despite their still being at the top of the list) more than just about any other occupation.
Perhaps you're correct, but I think we in the steveosphere (or HBD blogosphere or whatever you'd like to call it) and your overlapping but distinct futurepundit readership are way on the right end of the curve, even among colleagues of the professions we're engaged in (which are mostly white collar/professional). In the case of mechanical engineers, for example, the median wordsum test taker (born in the US), missed three of these ten words. Among physicians, half missed at least two. I'm skeptical that the average doctor or college professor does not know what the words "allusion" and "emanate" mean, but that is the reality.
Re: the smart fraction theory and RNs inclusion in it, that means fewer than 1 in 10 blacks meet the cognitive requirements to be nurses. That isn't the sense I get from what I've seen.
Peter,
Yes, those sample sizes are obviously highly unreliable. But there are surveyors out there, somewhere, born in the US, who missed half the words shown at the link to Inductivist's post where he reveals wordsum's contents.
Thanks.
It's a low stakes test so people probably put less effort into checking it twice, which tends to compress scores.
You might be able to estimate the impact of the restriction of range problem by looking at the 10/10 scorers for different groups to see if there are more of them than, say, 9/10 scorers.
The rank order seems pretty good, although biased against quant types by being a vocabulary test.
Besides the obvious low relative scoring of engineers and accountants, and high relative scoring of teachers, I noticed that cops scored a pretty significant 8 points higher than firemen. It usually seems that both groups usually are estimated at similar IQ's, so i found this interesting.
Aud,
I think psychometricians have collected a lot of data on IQ and occupations. If you go to this PDF on page 3 you will see occupations of white enlisted men in 1945. You can also see another table on page 58 of this document by Linda Gottfredson.
But these tables lack many modern job categories. I'd like to see different engineering fields and assorted IT jobs listed.
FP,
The numbers from 1945 appear to really be inflated, but I think rank order is more important than converted score. I agree with your thrust, but another source is rarely a bad thing, and since I did the legwork, I figured I might as well let everyone else take a look at it.
Jack,
Yes, I noticed that as well and almost included it in the body of the post. The sample sizes for both are sufficiently large, making it a curiosity that's not easy to just blow off as the product of randomness.
Aud,
1945: The lower skilled occupations had smarter people in them because few of the smarter people had switched to cognitively demanding occupations yet.
The 1945 scores are from white enlisted men in the Air Force. I suspect the Army Air Corp got a lot of applicants and was fairly selective compared to the Army. On the other hand, Air Force officers probably scored even better on average.
I suppose the table means that if you're a lumberjack, that's not okay.
sociologist > engineers
you gotta be joking
> Lumberjack 75.3
That one also seems meaningless. 75 is basically retarded, and I think in general, instead of having 'simple' jobs, retarded people tend to simply not work at all, certainly not in as dangerous a field as lumberjacking.
How anyone could think a ten question vocabulary test shows IQ is beyond me. While my IQ is reasonably high I easily aced the wordsum test because I read a lot. Also wordsum supposedly correlates with adult IQ which is much less valid than child IQ because of education levels. It's pretty obvious for example, that people with English majors would regularly outscore people with science majors. This seems like common sense, but apparently it isn't to people that think this is an IQ test.
as someone pursuing a career as a firefighter, your list is definitely inaccurate.
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