9th July 2014
A tiny sliver of humanity contributes more than 50 per cent to our progress and wealth. #2
I haven’t found many papers that explore the inequality of human contributions, about how a very small proportion of humanity contributes disproportionately to human progress and wealth.
This makes is crucial to nurture, develop and attract the world's top talent (both academics and students).
The previous paper I provided demonstrates the disproportionate value of top talent in the following ways:
a) Marginal product: The distribution of income and wealth is highly skewed. If we assume that income represents the marginal product in a competitive economy, this strongly indicates differences in productivity across each cohort, largely (based on other studies) based on human capital and innate capacity,
b) Publications: Journal publications by scientists follow a similar skewed distribution, particularly in terms of impact.
One can add Tyler Cowen's book, Average is Over, to the mix.
No society can be a leader in tomorrow's world without having a "pointy end" of super-bright scientists and technologists.
This does not mean that others don't need to be well-educated, but that a special strategy is needed to support the very top end of each cohort.
I believe the best mechanisms for this include total privatisation of higher education, along with special arrangements (preferably through private initiatives) to increase the quality of education in the physical sciences.
I don't agree that IQ is a proper measure of the quality of human capital. It is true that "the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2 percent of society (130) is currently between $6,000 and $18,500 a year" [Source].
However, I'm talking about a combination of IQ, knowledge and passion that determines the very top contributors in society. These people are serious outliers, out by six sigmas or more, but not on IQ alone.
I'm on the lookout for solid research on this topic, so would appreciate inputs.
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