More intelligent people are more libertarian on economic issues

There is a tendency for more intelligent people to hold more libertarian views on economic issues. (Some people may call them economic “conservatives.”) This is not as strong as the tendency for more intelligent people to be less religious.

Once again, the Wordsum vocabulary test of the GSS is used to make these comparisons. Note that the median score on the Wordsum test is 6.

When it comes to helping the poor, the more intelligent are definitely more libertarian:

EQWLTH Some people think that the government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor, perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor. Others think that the government should not concern itself with reducing this income difference between the rich and the poor. Here is a card with a scale from 1 to 7. Think of a score of 1 as meaning that the government ought to reduce the income differences between rich and poor, and a score of 7 meaning that the government should not concern itself with reducing income differences. What score between 1 and 7 comes closest to the way you feel?

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
EQWLTH	1: GOVT REDUCE DIFF	27.3 1,028	15.1 538	10.1 235	18.7 1,801
	2	10.8 405	9.9 353	9.5 220	10.2 978
	3	16.3 614	18.2 647	18.2 423	17.5 1,684
	4	20.9 785	21.2 754	18.5 430	20.4 1,969
	5	9.9 371	13.6 484	15.8 367	12.7 1,222
	6	4.8 180	8.9 317	11.6 270	8.0 767
	7: NO GOVT ACTION	10.0 376	12.9 459	16.3 378	12.6 1,213
	COL TOTAL	100.0 3,759	100.0 3,552	100.0 2,323	100.0 9,634

AIDHOUSE On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government's responsibility to ... I. Provide decent housing for those who can't afford it.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
AIDHOUSE	1: DEFIN SHOULD BE	28.1 150	15.8 92	11.7 46	19.1 288
	2: PROBAB SHOULD BE	49.2 262	51.2 299	49.7 195	50.1 756
	3: PROB SHOULD NOT BE	16.5 88	25.3 148	30.9 121	23.7 357
	4: DEFIN SHOULD NOT BE	6.2 33	7.7 45	7.7 30	7.2 108
	COL TOTAL	100.0 533	100.0 584	100.0 392	100.0 1,509

More intelligent respondents are far more libertarian when it comes to government price controls:

SETPRICE Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... B. Control of prices by legislation.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
SETPRICE	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	13.8 79	9.4 57	3.2 13	9.4 149
	2: IN FAVOR	31.5 181	27.3 166	19.4 78	26.8 425
	3: NEITHER	25.4 146	23.2 141	22.6 91	23.8 378
	4: AGAINST	22.8 131	29.8 181	36.2 146	28.9 458
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	6.4 37	10.4 63	18.6 75	11.0 175
	COL TOTAL	100.0 574	100.0 608	100.0 403	100.0 1,585

When it comes to cutting government spending, the more intelligent are slightly less in favor than the average to slightly above average respondents. But there is a stronger tendency for the less intelligent to be against spending cuts, so overall people who favor spending cuts are more intelligent than average:

CUTGOVT Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... C. Cuts in government spending.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
CUTGOVT	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	35.5 207	40.5 250	41.0 166	38.8 623
	2: IN FAVOR	39.1 228	44.7 276	40.7 165	41.7 669
	3: NEITHER	17.3 101	10.2 63	12.6 51	13.4 215
	4: AGAINST	5.3 31	3.9 24	4.4 18	4.5 73
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	2.7 16	.8 5	1.2 5	1.6 26
	COL TOTAL	100.0 583	100.0 618	100.0 405	100.0 1,606

People who favor less government regulation of business are more intelligent than average, but people opposed to less government regulation of business are also more intelligent than average. How is that? The more intelligent are less likely to be undecided.

Libertarians will at least be happy that the nation has a strong preference for less government regulation: 46.1% want less and only 18% don’t.

LESSREG Here are some things the government might do for the economy. Circle one number for each action to show whether you are in favor of it or against it. ... E. Less government regulation of business.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
LESSREG	1: STRONGLY IN FAVOR	10.7 62	15.3 94	13.2 53	13.1 209
	2: IN FAVOR	32.4 187	32.4 199	34.7 139	33.0 525
	3: NEITHER	40.6 234	35.3 217	30.2 121	35.9 572
	4: AGAINST	13.0 75	14.2 87	18.7 75	14.9 237
	5: STRONGLY AGAINST	3.3 19	2.8 17	3.2 13	3.1 49
	COL TOTAL	100.0 577	100.0 614	100.0 401	100.0 1,592

But one area where more intelligent people are far less libertarian is when it comes to government spending on the environment. More intelligent people want the government to spend more:

Listed below are various areas of government spending. Please indicate whether you would like to see more or less government spending in each area. Remember that if you say "much more," it might require a tax increase to pay for it. ... A. The environment.

Frequency Distribution
Cells contain: -Column percent -N of cases		WORDSUM
		1 0-5	2 6-7	3 8-10	ROW TOTAL
SPENVIRO	1: SPEND MUCH MORE	13.7 77	12.4 75	16.1 64	13.8 216
	2: SPEND MORE	37.4 210	43.0 260	46.2 184	41.8 654
	3: SPEND SAME	36.1 203	35.4 214	28.1 112	33.8 529
	4: SPEND LESS	9.6 54	7.8 47	6.8 27	8.2 128
	5: SPEND MUCH LESS	3.2 18	1.5 9	2.8 11	2.4 38
	COL TOTAL	100.0 562	100.0 605	100.0 398	100.0 1,565

ANALYSIS

I pointed out before that, traditionally, Republicans are more intelligent than Democrats. This blog post explains the phenomenon: more intelligent people are more likely to agree with the Republican platform of “conservative” economic policies.

Government spending for the environment is a specific exception to the general principle of the more intelligent being more libertarian (or more economically conservative). I suspect that respondents don’t see the question as an economics question but rather as a question about how much they care about the environment. The more intelligent are more environmentally conscious. Other questions in the GSS show the same tendency for more intelligent people to care more about the environment.

In a certain sense, the more intelligent “consume” environmental spending more than the less intelligent. More intelligent people have greater income and they use it to go on vacations where they admire the beauty of nature. Communing with nature is an intellectual pursuit. The more intelligent are in favor of government spending which they perceive to directly benefit them and which promotes the values they hold dear.

Comments

[SciFiGeek]

You sure you're not somehow picking up a class difference here? Environmentalism has always been one of the more affluent leftist movements.

[Half Sigma]

SiFiGeek, it's most certainly a class difference because the upper classes are more intelligent than the lower classes.

But I suppose you are asking whether smart people who are lower class (lower income, no college degree) feel less environmentally friendly. An interesting question worth investigating.

[Half Sigma]

OK, my quickie regression analysis shows that SciFiGeek is correct, it's mostly class.

A bachelor's degree is a better predictor of pro-environment than Wordsum(8-10), and a graduate degree even more so.

BWordsum is still independently correlated with being pro-environment. Perhaps because smarter people are better at figuring out what the upper class behaviors are and mimicking them.

[Peter]

Nothing suprising here. High-IQ people are relatively unlikely to be major users of government social programs. That sometimes leads to a generally libertarian outlook.

[SciFiGeek]

Trust me, most liberals actually believe in environmentalism. Do you think the granola hippies in Oregon living in a rusty schoolbus are mimicking upper-class behviors? ;) (Half Sigma, you live in NYC. We're SURROUNDED by liberals!)

Here's something I've never seen us tackle: gender differences. Is there a difference between bright women and bright men? Check out the Pew Research Center's report on political groups; the 'Enterprisers' and 'Liberals' represent the top of the economic scale and are the most polarized, as well as the most informed. Could polarization have to do with elite men and women taking opposite positions and getting into fights over politics at dinner?

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242

[Carnivore Jesus]

I thought that men are more intelligent than women...which explains why black men love white women, their IQ bell curve is pretty much identical.

[Nick]

It all depends on your definition of intelligent. Who is smarter, the person that sees the need to conserve energy and resources for the sake of saving the planet enough so that we may survive and thrive here, or the person that understands there is no way to convince everyone to conserve so why waste time thinking about it? Both are smart, and correct, in different ways. The smartest person would be the one that knows we need to conserve and preserve and can intelligently convince everyone else to actually do it.

[Randall Parker]

People who have higher incomes have satisfied basic needs and therefore move on to esthetic and environmental desires and preferences. But to satisfy those desires they need to convince others to support regulations designed to make the environment more appealing.

As a society rises in affluence a growing trend in support of a cleaner environment can be predicted to occur.

People who make more money are smarter on average. So are they environmentalists due to class or due to IQ? Probably some of both.

But there's also something cultural or genetic going on. Some races and ethnicities like the great outdoors a lot more than others. Whites appear to love nature the most. You won't find large numbers of Hispanics at the great national parks for example.