Ranking of High I.Q. Countries - old reports

© 2004-2008 Paul Cooijmans

Ranking by protonorms - October 2008

This table ranks the countries of origin of 1318 scores on high-range intelligence tests designed and scored by Paul Cooijmans. Countries are ranked first by weighted median protonorm and then by number of scores from that country. The I.Q.s in the table are based on the current (2008) norming of protonorms to I.Q. Countries with two or more scores are included in their own right, and countries with only one score are included in "Remaining countries".

The tests used are mentioned under the table; For each test, the median protonorm scores per country were determined, after which for each country the weighted median across the tests was calculated.

Rank Country Protonorm I.Q. # scores
1 Cambodia 500 157 6
2 Korea, South 497 156 2
3 New Zealand 491 156 2
4 Slovenia 487 155 3
5 Denmark 480 153 10
6 Serbia and Montenegro 473 152 5
7 Canada 459 150 45
8 Germany 453 149 46
9 Iran 452 149 2
10 Malta 450 148 12
11 Belgium 447 147 45
12 Poland 442 147 14
13 Portugal 440 146 16
14 Switzerland 440 146 7
15 Israel 433 145 9
16 Austria 432 145 3
17 United Kingdom 430 144 73
18 France 424 143 44
19 Australia 423 143 23
20 Remaining countries 414 142 9
21 Spain 413 141 28
22 Norway 413 141 26
23 Brazil 413 141 14
24 Finland 412 140 76
25 Sweden 412 140 73
26 Luxembourg 412 140 3
27 Greece 409 140 29
28 Netherlands 403 139 96
29 United States 395 139 328
30 Mexico 394 139 3
31 Yugoslavia 393 138 3
32 Bosnia and Herzegovina 392 137 5
33 Hong Kong 389 137 6
34 Thailand 389 137 4
35 Italy 384 135 17
36 Cyprus 380 134 3
37 Japan 374 134 5
38 Argentina 367 132 3
39 Turkey 359 130 23
40 Lithuania 335 128 2
41 South Africa 333 128 5
42 India 308 124 6
43 Singapore 287 121 11

The "Remaining countries" are: Chile, China, Cuba, Hungary, Iceland, Malaysia, Philippines, Romania and Russia. Yugoslavia has meanwhile fallen apart, but in the absence of other information on the origin of those candidates the old name is used in this report.

The tests used are: Cartoons of Shock, Cooijmans Intelligence Test Forms 1 and 2, De Laatste Test, The Final Test, Genius Association Test, Isis Test, Low Countries Aptitude Test, Lieshout International Mesospheric Intelligence Test, The Nemesis Test, Numbers, Odds, Test For Genius (Long, Short, French, Netherlandic and Revision 2004), The Test To End All Tests, The Sargasso Test, Test of Shock and Awe, Spatial Insight Test, Space, Time and Hyperspace, Bonsai Test, Numerical Insight Test, Reason, and Qoymans Multiple-Choice #4.

The correlation of the ranks in this table with the countries' national average I.Q.s published by Lynn and Vanhanen in "I.Q. and the Wealth of Nations" is -.227 (which is significant if the number of used scores is considered). Since it concerns ranks, this must be understood as +.227 in terms of actual correlation of test scores. This is typical for the correlation with national I.Q.s found in the statistical reports for the individual tests.

Ranking by mean I.Q. - April 2006

This report gives the weighted average IQs of a number of countries over a number of normed tests, to wit the QMC (all versions), Test of Shock and Awe, Spatial Insight Test, Test For Genius (all versions), Space, Time and Hyperspace, Bonsai Test, CIT (Forms 1 and 2), Final Test, Cartoons of Shock, COLT, Laatste Test, GAT, KIT, LIMIT, Nemesis Test, Numbers, Odds, Psychometric Qrosswords, Reason and The Test To End All Tests.

For each test the mean I.Q.s were used of countries with at least two testees. The below table contains the countries that showed up with an average on at least two tests, ranked first by I.Q. and then by number of scores from that country. Countries thus excluded from this table include Switzerland, Hong Kong, Slovenia, Argentina, Singapore, Iran and China (there may be more that didn't show up at all). Those countries may appear in the table in a later analysis.

RankCountryMean I.Q. (SD=15)# scores
1Poland148.58
2Germany147.634
3United Kingdom145.561
4Malta145.54
5Denmark1454
6Belgium144.826
7Finland144.663
8Spain144.34
9Brazil144.210
10Australia144.118
11Canada143.933
12Turkey143.36
13France142.727
14Sweden141.573
15Norway141.311
16Greece139.417
17United States139.2331
18Israel1384
19The Netherlands137.591
20Italy136.615
21Japan136.36
22.5Bosnia and Herzegovina1354
22.5South Africa1354
24India127.54

The correlation with the national average I.Q.s published by Lynn and Vanhanen is .45, which is significant beyond the level of .05. This is a low correlation, but for the first time a significant positive one; The correlations found in individual tests, which I report routinely, are usually around zero and/or not significant. So it may be that if you combine many tests and scores and thus catch in a wide range of countries, you do eventually find a significant positive correlation with national average I.Q.s.

Ranking by points - 2004

This report focuses on the performance by country over seven tests that received substantial numbers of submissions: LTFG, CIT, Final Test, QMC #3, Numbers, Short TFG and STH. Combined it concerns 754 test submissions.

For each test a ranking is made by average score by country (only countries with at least two testees are listed). The top nine countries on each test get points descending from 9 to 1. These points are summed over the seven tests. The following table results:

Rank Country Points
1 Finland 45
2 United Kingdom 34
3 Canada 32
4 Belgium 31
5 United States 25
6 Australia 21
7 Germany 20
8 Greece 14
9.5 Sweden 13
9.5 Netherlands 13
11 Norway 11
12.5 France 9
12.5 Denmark 9
14 Poland 8
15 Brazil 7
16 Slovenia 6
17.5 Italy 4
17.5 Malta 4
19 Bosnia and Herzegovina 2
20 Turkey 1

For further information I computed the correlation between the points totals per country and the average national I.Q.s published by Lynnn and Vanhanen as .3 (not significant). The correlation between actual scores on the seven tests and national I.Q.s is .069 over 536 pairs (almost significant). So on the whole there appears to be no or very little correlation between performance on high-range tests and national average I.Q.s. This may be because of the restriction of range you get with high-range tests (only those who are quite intelligent to begin with take them, leaving less room for correlation); also, it may be that countries not only differ in average I.Q., but also in spread of I.Q..