patrick.net

AD says

Booger says

Nicaragua is a 53 and has not much excuse compared to Somalia which has been under constant civil war for at least 30 years

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

.

WorldPopulationReview uses the data of the International IQ test average IQ by country report. Somalia isn't present in the ranking due to insufficient data, and Nicaragua is lower in the ranking with an IQ of 88.7.

IQ scores below 70 are clinically considered an indicator of Intellectual Disability, so it's very unlikely for any country to have an average IQ below that threshold.

IQ of Somalia

The reported average IQ for Somalia varies significantly across different sources, with estimates ranging from 67 to 92.57. One source citing a 2006 study by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen claims an average IQ of 68 for Somalia, a figure that has been widely criticized and discredited due to flawed methodology and lack of representative data This estimate, which assumes Somalia's IQ is an average of Ethiopia and Kenya based on unrepresentative samples, has been described as a "fake number" and is not supported by rigorous research Other sources provide higher estimates: a 2025 analysis from IQ-Global Test reports an average IQ of 92.57 based on over 100 responses, ranking Somalia 148th globally Another source, IQ Haven, reports an average of 72.67 based on a high-range IQ test, though this data is from 2022 and may not reflect the broader population A 2017 study of Somali refugees in Kenya found an average IQ of 66.8, slightly lower than the 68 estimate, but this sample is not representative of the entire population Additional claims, such as an average IQ of 84 or 85, are based on broader regional assessments that consider factors like conflict and education access The inconsistency among these figures highlights the challenges in measuring national IQ averages, particularly in countries with limited infrastructure and data collection

https://search.brave.com/search?q=iq+of+somalia&source=desktop&conversation=7185a82b9d6b482f8eb771&summary=1

The very highest estimate is 92, based on 100 responses, rather than a general population sampling. Most research done points to well below 90.

Patrick says

That for a couple of kids is, what, 30 grand a year? $30,000 a year. Thousand dollar a month per kid, something like this, right? You can’t make that work unless you’ve got a $150,000 income between the two of you. Your wife goes to work, or you go to work, and when neither of you stays home, you both go to work. Basically, none of that second salary ends up going to the improvement in your standard of living because it all gets sucked up by the health care and the child care costs if you have children.

This used to work when neighborhoods were full of older Silent Gen/Greatest Gen empty nester housewives. Who were happy to watch younger kids for a few extra bucks a week and still young/healthy enough and in quantity to do so. It collapsed when they aged out and most women worked.

Consanguineous marriage, particularly between first or second cousins, is reported to be relatively common in certain regions of Somalia, though data varies significantly by clan and region. A 2019 genetic study of Ethiopian Somalis found that 48.7% of individuals were products of first or second cousin marriages, with an average inbreeding coefficient (FROH) of 0.018, which is higher than the typical coefficient for second cousin offspring.
Regional rates in similar cultures range from 44% to 63%.

In northern Somalia, traditional marriage practices often involve contracting unions between previously non-related families to establish new alliances.
In southern Somalia, the preferred spouse is often a patrilateral parallel cousin, either real or classificatory.
While cousin marriage is not universally common across all Somali clans, it is more prevalent in certain groups, particularly those with stronger ties to Arab heritage.
Some sources indicate that it is more common in smaller clans or among specific subgroups, such as the Reer Badiya, though it is often arranged or encouraged by older family members to strengthen familial bonds.

https://search.brave.com/search?q=consanguinity+by+country+somalia&source=web&conversation=e974c1a33ec94232cbc86b&summary=1

From perplexity.ai:

Meta‑style reviews and classic studies suggest an average drop of about 2.5–3.5 IQ points for children of first cousins (about 0.15–0.25 standard deviations).

Some individual studies in highly inbred populations report larger differences (up to 8–10 points), but those settings often combine multiple generations of consanguinity and other risk factors, so they are not typical for a one‑off first‑cousin marriage.

More important than the small shift in average IQ is the increased risk at the low end:

A classic analysis estimated the risk of “mental retardation” (IQ <70 in older terminology) rising from about 1.2% with unrelated parents to about 6.2% for children of first cousins.

This is thought to be due to recessive disease alleles becoming homozygous more often when parents share ancestry at many loci.

One point I learned in too many years of biology in college is that everyone has a few defective genes making nonfunctional proteins, but normally, you also have a different gene from the other parent at the same locus (as gene locations are called).

The other gene is unlikely to also happen to be defective, so most genetic diseases require inheriting the same bad gene from both parents. This is why inbreeding causes problems.

There is an opposite effect, called "outbreeding depression" in which it's beneficial to disable a gene in a certain environment. A simple example is genes for dark skin. In sunny climates, these genes help protect the skin, but in northern climates, they result in vitamin D deficiency and a resulting increase in disease. So in northern climates, people with broken genes for melanin did better in life when they got the same broken gene from both parents via inbreeding, eventually displacing people with dark skin completely in Europe. So a bit of inbreeding helped them, and outbreeding hurt them.

Also interesting: a vast number of your genes code for the brain and for joint structure, so typical signs of inbreeding are retardation and defective joints.