Race and General Cognitive Ability: The Myth of Diminishing Returns to Education

The impact of education on racial differences in general cognitive ability was assessed using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. To control for attrition during the educational process, we compared the scores of individuals who ultimately attained the same level of education but who were tested at different points in their educational careers. Multiple regression analyses revealed that education can have a strong positive effect on cognitive ability in both whites and blacks. Whites benefited more from education than blacks during the high school years, but blacks benefited much more than whites from a college education, substantially narrowing the gap between the races. These findings contradict the hypothesis that racial differences in intelligence are relatively immutable, in part because of the diminishing returns from increases in education.