☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

In a home conversation with my wife who is Belarusian and comparison between Bulgarian and Belarusian nation, the interesting question arised – Which nation is Smarter Bulgarian or Belarusian?

This little conversation pushed me to intriguing question What is the IQ World rank if compared by country? Since a moment of my life I'm trying to constantly prove to myself I'm smart enough. For years my motivation was to increase my IQ. I had periods when studied hard history, philosophy and literature then I had periods to put all my efforts in music and mysticism then there was my fascination about IT and informatics and hacking, I had periods with profound interest in Biology and neourosciences, then of course psychology and social sciences and since last 10 years as I belived in God, I'm deeply interested in world religions and more particularly in Christniaty. All this is connected with my previous IQ (Intelligence Quotient) and my desire to develop my IQ. I'm quite aware that IQ statistics can never be 100% reliable as there is deviation (standard error) and its a very general way to find out about a person psychology. But anyways it is among the few methods to compare people's intelligence… I've done an IQ test in distant 2008 and I scored about 118 out of 180  – meaning my  IQ level is a little bit above average. The IQ conversation triggered my curiousity so I decided to check if my current IQ has changed over the last 6 years. Here is results from test I took March, 2013 on free-iqtest.net

IQtest just prooved, my IQ kept almost same, still a little bit above avarage.
Further on, I did investgation online to see if I can prove to my wife the thesis Bulgarians overall IQ is higher than Belarusian. I googled for IQ world rank by Country
Here is what I found ;

 

Nations Intelligence as sorted by Country

Rank ——–	Country ———————–	% ————-
1	Singapore	108
2	South Korea	106
3	Japan	105
4	Italy	102
5	Iceland	101
5	Mongolia	101
6	Switzerland	101
7	Austria	100
7	China	100
7	Luxembourg	100
7	Netherlands	100
7	Norway	100
7	United Kingdom	100
8	Belgium	99
8	Canada	99
8	Estonia	99
8	Finland	99
8	Germany	99
8	New Zealand	99
8	Poland	99
8	Sweden	99
9	Andorra	98
9	Australia	98
9	Czech Republic	98
9	Denmark	98
9	France	98
9	Hungary	98
9	Latvia	98
9	Spain	98
9	United States	98
10	Belarus	97
10	Malta	97
10	Russia	97
10	Ukraine	97
11	Moldova	96
11	Slovakia	96
11	Slovenia	96
11	Uruguay	96
12	Israel	95
12	Portugal	95
13	Armenia	94
13	Georgia	94
13	Kazakhstan	94
13	Romania	94
13	Vietnam	94
14	Argentina	93
14	Bulgaria	93
15	Greece	92
15	Ireland	92
15	Malaysia	92
16	Brunei	91
16	Cambodia	91
16	Cyprus	91
16	FYROM	91
16	Lithuania	91
16	Sierra Leone	91
16	Thailand	91
17	Albania	90
17	Bosnia and Herzegovina	90
17	Chile	90
17	Croatia	90
17	Kyrgyzstan	90
17	Turkey	90
18	Cook Islands	89
18	Costa Rica	89
18	Laos	89
18	Mauritius	89
18	Serbia	89
18	Suriname	89
19	Ecuador	88
19	Mexico	88
19	Samoa	88
20	Azerbaijan	87
20	Bolivia	87
20	Brazil	87
20	Guyana	87
20	Indonesia	87
20	Iraq	87
20	Myanmar (Burma)	87
20	Tajikistan	87
20	Turkmenistan	87
20	Uzbekistan	87
21	Kuwait	86
21	Philippines	86
21	Seychelles	86
21	Tonga	86
22	Cuba	85
22	Eritrea	85
22	Fiji	85
22	Kiribati	85
22	Peru	85
22	Trinidad and Tobago	85
22	Yemen	85
23	Afghanistan	84
23	Bahamas, The	84
23	Belize	84
23	Colombia	84
23	Iran	84
23	Jordan	84
23	Marshall Islands	84
23	Micronesia, Federated States of	84
23	Morocco	84
23	Nigeria	84
23	Pakistan	84
23	Panama	84
23	Paraguay	84
23	Saudi Arabia	84
23	Solomon Islands	84
23	Uganda	84
23	United Arab Emirates	84
23	Vanuatu	84
23	Venezuela	84
24	Algeria	83
24	Bahrain	83
24	Libya	83
24	Oman	83
24	Papua New Guinea	83
24	Syria	83
24	Tunisia	83
25	Bangladesh	82
25	Dominican Republic	82
25	India	82
25	Lebanon	82
25	Madagascar	82
25	Zimbabwe	82
26	Egypt	81
26	Honduras	81
26	Maldives	81
26	Nicaragua	81
27	Barbados	80
27	Bhutan	80
27	El Salvador	80
27	Kenya	80
28	Guatemala	79
28	Sri Lanka	79
28	Zambia	79
29	Congo, Democratic Republic of the	78
29	Nepal	78
29	Qatar	78
30	Comoros	77
30	South Africa	77
31	Cape Verde	76
31	Congo, Republic of the	76
31	Mauritania	76
31	Senegal	76
32	Mali	74
32	Namibia	74
33	Ghana	73
34	Tanzania	72
35	Central African Republic	71
35	Grenada	71
35	Jamaica	71
35	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	71
35	Sudan	71
36	Antigua and Barbuda	70
36	Benin	70
36	Botswana	70
36	Rwanda	70
36	Togo	70
37	Burundi	69
37	Cote d'Ivoire	69
37	Ethiopia	69
37	Malawi	69
37	Niger	69
38	Angola	68
38	Burkina Faso	68
38	Chad	68
38	Djibouti	68
38	Somalia	68
38	Swaziland	68
39	Dominica	67
39	Guinea	67
39	Guinea-Bissau	67
39	Haiti	67
39	Lesotho	67
39	Liberia	67
39	Saint Kitts and Nevis	67
39	Sao Tome and Principe	67
40	Gambia, The	66
41	Cameroon	64
41	Gabon	64
41	Mozambique	64
42	Saint Lucia	62
43	Equatorial Guinea	59
	North Korea	N/A

 

– Countries are ranked highest to lowest national IQ score.

Above statistics are taken from a work carried out earlier this decade by Richard Lynn, a British psychologist, and Tatu Vanhanen, a Finnish political scientist. To extract statistics they analized  IQ studies from 113 countries.  

For my surprise it appeared Belarusian (ranking 10th in the world) have generally higher IQ than Bulgarians (ordering 14th). Anyways being 14th in world IQ Ranking is not bad at all as we still rank in the top 20 smartest nations.

IQ is a relative way to measure intelligence, so I don't believe these statistics are revelant but they give some very general idea about world IQs.

I learned there are some claims that in more developed economies people have higher IQs than less developed. If we take in consideration above statistics its obvious such claims are dubious as you can see there are countries in top 5 countries with highest IQ, and surely Mongolia is not to be ordered in countries with high economic development.

There are plenty of other interesting researches like "Does IQ relates to people Income?", Does Religious people score higher than atheists? According to research done in U.S. Atheists score 6 IQ points higher than Religious people. However most "religous" people IQ tested were from protestant origin so results are relative (I'm sure Orthodox Christian would score higher 🙂 ). The IQ nation world ranks fail in a way that, a social, economic and historical factors are not counted. According to Gallups research, the world poorest people tend to be the most religious, a fact supporting well the saying of all saints who say that for saintly life people who preferred deliberately to live as poor people.