Question
Does education increase IQ?
Short answer
Yes. A 2018 meta-analysis of studies covering over 600,000 people found that each extra year of education raises cognitive ability by about 1 to 5 IQ points. The effect showed up across many kinds of ability and lasted into later life. The authors called education the most consistent known way to raise intelligence.
Want your own number? The test is 25 visual puzzles, about 12 minutes, no sign-up.
The question is harder than it looks
People who stay in school longer tend to score higher on IQ tests. A 2007 meta-analysis put the correlation between intelligence and education at about 0.56 (Strenze, 2007). But a correlation alone cannot say which way the arrow points. Brighter students may simply choose to stay in school longer. To test whether schooling itself raises intelligence, researchers need designs where the amount of schooling changes for reasons unrelated to ability.
What the 2018 meta-analysis did
Stuart Ritchie and Elliot Tucker-Drob pooled three kinds of quasi-experimental studies: studies that controlled for intelligence measured before the extra schooling, studies of policy changes that raised the compulsory school-leaving age, and studies comparing children born just before and just after a school-entry cutoff date. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets and over 600,000 participants, they found consistent benefits of about 1 to 5 IQ points per additional year of education (Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018).
Two details matter. The effects persisted across the life span rather than fading after school, and they appeared on every broad category of cognitive ability the studies measured (Ritchie & Tucker-Drob, 2018). That makes it hard to explain the gains as teaching to the test.
Try one · Spatial Reasoning
Which option is the same shape, only rotated?
Tap the option you think is right, or show the answer.
Show the answer
Option 4 is the original figure turned a half turn.
How to solve it
- Pick a landmark: the marked cell or the end of the longest arm.
- Turn the figure in your head and watch where that landmark goes, and which side the other cells end up on.
- Turning the figure a half turn gives option 4.
- Each of the other options is a mirror image: flipping it over would match, but no turn does.
That was 1 puzzle. The full test has 25.
Reading is one likely route
A study of 1,890 pairs of identical twins, who share their genes, found that the twin who read better at an earlier age tended to show higher intelligence later, and not only on verbal tasks (Ritchie, Bates & Plomin, 2015). Learning to read well may be one way schooling builds broader reasoning.
How this fits with the Flynn effect
Average IQ test performance rose by about 2.8 points per decade across the 20th century (Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015), a period when schooling expanded in many countries. Our sources do not pin down how much of that rise schooling explains, but the education findings are consistent with environments shaping measured intelligence. See are people getting smarter and how environment shapes intelligence.
What it means for you
Learning keeps paying off. Compared with quick fixes like brain games, education has the strongest evidence of any method studied. For the full picture of what does and does not work, read can you raise your intelligence and can you increase your IQ.
Sources
- Ritchie, S. J., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2018). How much does education improve intelligence? A meta-analysis. Psychological Science, 29(8), 1358-1369. doi.org/10.1177/0956797618774253
- Strenze, T. (2007). Intelligence, 35(5), 401-426. doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2006.09.004
- Ritchie, S. J., Bates, T. C., & Plomin, R. (2015). Does learning to read improve intelligence? Child Development, 86(1), 23-36. doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12272
- Pietschnig, J., & Voracek, M. (2015). One century of global IQ gains. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(3), 282-306. doi.org/10.1177/1745691615577701