I Am A Dropout, Like My Father Before Me

There's an interesting new study that suggests people are getting - very slowly - less apt for education. It's based on research in Iceland; its small, long-isolated population makes it a goldmine of genetic research. It probably applies to other populations too, but for now we can only be sure of Iceland's slow decline. Now, if you agree that Björk was better than Of Monsters and Men, you have some scientific backing.

This is the sort of study that is destined to be misinterpreted and exaggerated for years to come. No doubt there are dozens of anti-Millennial essays being pounded out right now on hundreds of Baby Boomers' manual typewriters. But the truth is that the effect is tiny - less than an IQ point a decade.

But still, it's an interesting idea. It's easy to imagine how this could happen. Natural Selection works when factors affect a creature's likelihood to reproduce, and there are still plenty of factors that affect human reproduction rates, even if they're no longer sabre-toothed factors. And unlike past natural selection, this may not reward good qualities. In the education example, the thinking is that people who dedicate a lot of their life to their education will probably have less time to have kids. Say you take a masters, you won't graduate until well into your twenties. Your counterparts who got real jobs after their bachelors have a few years headstart on starting a family. And folks who just did high school have already been going forth and multiplying for the better part of a decade. Any genes that encourage education get passed to fewer members of the next generation.

Who knows how many other things could affect your reproduction? The type of job you have, the food you buy, the place you live. It's important to realize that these effects a not just small and slow, they're also dwarfed by individual differences. So you'll find plenty of prolific parents doing post-docs, and childless high school dropouts. Thus, these findings don't have much short-term practical use. And talk of overall strength of genetics will remind people of eugenics. But I like my science dangerous, useless and misleading. It's enlightening to demonstrate how natural selection works using relatively tangable things.