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This study from 2018 claims that the Norwegian Flynn effect and its reversal can be explained by environmental factors: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
What do our resident genetic experts think about this?
As I understand it, they look at the variation of IQ scores within families and test whether this variation can already explain the overall changes in IQ. The authors state:
I suppose this is true if we assume that any within-family variation also impacts between-family variation to the same degree. But is this necessarily the case? The authors compare changes in the IQs of firstborn sons (between-family variation) with the changes between siblings (within-family variation):
https://www.pnas.org/cms/10.1073/pnas.1718793115/asset/b216e2bb-eff7-4c28-8866-0b9808b56d1e/assets/graphic/pnas.1718793115fig02.jpeg
What if parents at some point decided that they will put more of their effort and resources in their first-born instead of their future children? This might lead to an increase in IQ for first-born, i.e. a positive between-family effect, and a decrease in IQ for second-born, i.e. a negative within-family effect. Or what if mothers decide to get their second-born later in life? This would keep the IQ of the first-born constant, while maybe depressing the IQ of the second-born. If such an effect occurs, there could still be a role for genetic or migration effects in explaining the changes in between-family variation. My examples may be a bit ad-hoc and I'm not really arguing for them fullheartedly, but I am a little surprised that they would not discuss this.
I also wonder about their "selection correction" procedure. They do this because they are worried about selected attrition from the sample. Specifically, if a first-born has low IQ, this lowers the probability of the second-born to be in the data. If this selection gets stronger over time, this would hide some negative within-family variation. After they do their selection correction, the within-family data almost perfectly matches the between-family data. I find this a little sus but I don't have a real reason to distrust it. Is it kosher?
In a follow-up article they show that men with strong cognitive abilities have higher fertility than those with low cognitive abilities: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10300504/
Nothing bad really jumps out at me. It seems like in Norway between 1950 and 1990, there probably really wasn't much of a dysgenic or eugenic effect. Do we find something similar for other countries?
Bonus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10618866/
This is a commentary to the previous article. They argue that dysgenic fertility is not a scientific concept because it relies on the assumption that cognitive abilities are good. As a reason why cognitive abilities might be bad, they state that it has a positive relationship with Parkinson's and "victimization at work". I suppose that means that all of social science is not scientific. After all, how can you say that e.g. crime or poverty are bad? For example, criminals have higher rates of casual sex, which may be good. And people in poverty do less tax evasion, which is also good. Therefore, trying to reduce poverty and crime relies on value judgements and is therefore not scientific.
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