Best/Worst
Smartest Countries 2026
- Substantial research on the subject of national IQs was conducted by psychologist Richard Lynn (1930-2023), working alongside the late Tatu Vanhanen (1929-2015) or, for 2019’s The Intelligence of Nations, with David Becker.
- Becker’s estimates are categorized by source. T = value is based upon actual test results from said country. E = value is a best-guess estimate based upon measured values of nearby countries.
- Becker’s contributions were highly controversial. He promoted the theory that specific races and genders are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than others, and both his methodology and his objectivity were often called into question. However, his work brought attention to the field and he is frequently (if often grudgingly) considered a pioneer in the field of national intelligence.
- The OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial survey of 15-year-old students around the world that measures students’ ability to recall learned knowledge and apply it in new settings both in and out of school. PISA results were most recently released in 2022.
- The Intelligence Capital Index (ICI) was created by economist Kai L. Chan and most recently updated in 2017.
Snapshot
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Determining the world's smartest countries is complex, involving such factors as literacy, IQ scores, Nobel Prizes, and standardized test outcomes.
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The OECD's PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results for 2022, assessing math, reading, and science skills, reveals East Asian countries like Singapore leading.
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The Intelligence Capital Index of 2017 focuses on how nations use their intelligence, with the U.S. leading in leveraging smart citizens for knowledge expansion.
Determining which countries are the smartest in the world is difficult because there are so many different factors that can be considered.
- Would the smartest country be the one with the most literate citizens?
- Maybe the smartest countries in the world would be those whose residents had the highest average IQ score country-wide?
- Or is the smartest country the one that has the highest percentage of extremely smart people?
- Could it even be the country whose citizens have earned the most Nobel Prizes?
- Standardized test scores could be another method of determining which nations are the smartest—if only it was possible to craft and administer a single standardized test that could accurately measure every aspect of intelligence in every person in every culture (and speaking every language) in every country.
Obviously, there exist challenges to any attempt to land on a single clear-and-simple answer. Nonetheless, population and intelligence experts continue to devise new methods and approaches that bring them closer and closer to a realistic ranking of the world’s smartest countries.
Some of the best-known and more widely publicized studies of world intelligence are conducted by British psychologist Richard Lynn. In a 2019 study titled The Intelligence of Nations, Lynn and collaborator David Becker measured the average IQ of citizens across 132 nations and calculated estimated scores for another 71. The top of the list looks as follows (scroll to the table at the bottom of the page for the rest).
Top 10 Smartest Countries by IQ
It would be irresponsible to neglect to mention that Lynn’s studies, while arguably the most comprehensive available, often spark considerable debate. Some detractors take issue with the methods Lynn uses to compute estimates when hard data is unavailable. Others accuse Lynn, an outspoken eugenicist, of using his data to support scientifically inaccurate theories.
The Link between Education and Intelligence
Education and intelligence are closely linked, as a more robust educational system tends to produce a more intelligent populace over time. With this in mind, some studies use the educational rankings of various countries as a basis for comparisons of intelligence. In 2023, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its triennial PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results, which compared the math, reading, and science testing scores of nearly 700,000 students in 81 countries for year 2022. The top 10 appear below.
Top 10 Smartest Countries Based on Math, Reading, and Science - OECD PISA 2022
A different OECD study, which used multiple data points for 2018, including adult education level, chose Canada as the most intelligent nation. Japan placed second, while Israel came in third. Other high-ranking nations include Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Finland.
One of the more creative studies of intelligence is the 2017 Intelligence Capital Index, or ICI, which used several factors to determine not the smartest nations overall, but which nations were most likely to leverage their smartest citizens’ intelligence to “expand the frontier of knowledge and/or introduce the technologies and innovations of the knowledge economy … Big Data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, etc.”
In the ICI study, the United States ranked number one and was the only nation to receive an A+ rating. Coming in second place was the United Kingdom, followed by Germany in third place. Other high-ranking nations on the ICI include Australia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Finland, and Denmark.
Sources
- Program for International Student Assessment 2022 - OCED
- Program for International Student Assessment 2018 - OCED
- The Intelligence of Nations - Ulster Institute 2019
- Intelligence Capital Index - World Monitor 2017
- Asia tops global school rankings - BBC
- The 10 smartest countries based on math and science
