Bell Curve Conclusions: Flawed due to Missing Data Error?

Abstract

The Bell Curve, written by Murray and Herrnstein, is one of the most controversial books of the last few decades, exploring the role human intelligence plays in predicting a variety of social factors. I examine one of their more notorious conclusions that intelligence, as measured by an IQ test, is a stronger predictor for future poverty than Family's Socioeco­nomic Status. sing the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979), we run regressions examining the relationship between Family SES, IQ test scores, and Age against probability of being in Poverty. Instead of using Bell Curve's method of dropping data that contained incomplete observations, we use an improved method that imputes missing data. i[y results show that IQ does indeed have a greater effect than parental SES on predicting Poverty if the individual is of less than average SES and IQ.