The biggest risk right now to our genetic success is overwhelmingly the fact that the people most likely to reproduce are the ones with the least amount of education.
Idiocracy wasn't a dystopia, it is a documentary...
Sarcasm aside: A low amount of education is not really related to genetics (some forms of inheritable mental health issues aside). There are, however, extremely strong correlations with poverty:
- poor families tend to live in areas with underfunded and thus lower-quality public schools, whereas rich people have better schools and can afford after-school private education
- poor families tend to have issues with food security, which was brutally shown by covid as schools had to stay open simply so that the children could have at least one warm, somewhat healthy meal a day
- poor families often tend to send their children off to work as soon as they can and are legally allowed to, simply to help make ends meet. That leaves them less time for homework and learning (leading to lower grades), and not being able to pursue higher education at all because having a job to survive is more important, which in turn locks them out of higher-paying careers and sets them up for being poor for life
Intelligence in adulthood is overwhelmingly heritable. Environmental and upbringing effects are small. Twin studies, unrelated sibling studies, etc, demonstrate very large effects.
(Oddly enough, intelligence in childhood does seem to be very influenced by environment, but by adulthood your genetic destiny takes hold).
Intelligence is also the biggest single predictor of your child's educational attainment-- even bigger than SES.
Of course, it's not really clear what one can do with this information that is both ethical and useful.
A confound: severe neglect and abuse is known to permanently reduce intelligence, and this is much less represented in adoption studies because of parental screening and social worker follow-up.
Wow!
Eugenics is a part of science deemed immoral and forever shunned because associated with the nazis, but maybe it would be good if we had made enough progress to avoid babies that come near death 4 times a day every day and require their two parents to be dedicated to their care 24/7.
Note I'm not saying to kill those unborn children, I'm saying that if this medical field had not been completely put to a stop following WW2, we wouldn't have to kill unborn children but we could do in utero interventions to prevent those conditions from developing.
"Kill the babies" is the current state of eugenics because it has been at a full stop for more than half of a century. That's my point.
If we disallow nature from taking its course, it will have consequences on "genetic quality". Following that train of thought and assuming we don't want to kill genetically malformed babies, an alternate route must be chosen. Better in-utero screening, CRISPR to fix the deformed genes, etc.
I'm not saying to kill those unborn children, I'm saying that if this medical field had not been completely put to a stop following WW2, we wouldn't have to kill unborn children but we could do in utero interventions to prevent those conditions from developing.