Has our century-long rise in intelligence gone into reverse? (Image: Oliver Jeffers)
We've got smarter and smarter in the 20th century, but now there are signs that IQs have begun to fall in countries such as the UK and Australia
IN DENMARK, every man is liable for military service at the age of 18. Nowadays, only a few thousand get conscripted but all have to be assessed, and that includes doing an IQ test. Until recently, the same one had been used since the 1950s. "We actually have the same test being administered to 25 to 30,000 young men every year," says Thomas Teasdale, a psychologist at the University of Copenhagen.
The results are surprising. Over this time, there has been a dramatic increase in the average IQ of Danish men. So much so that what would have been an average score in the 1950s is now ...
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