Average IQ in the United States: How the US Compares

Why do the sources disagree?

The disagreement is not random error; it comes from three real differences in method.

1. Different underlying tests. A "national IQ" is a patchwork of studies that used different instruments, from Raven's Progressive Matrices to school achievement tests such as PISA and TIMSS converted into an IQ-like scale. Convert the same country different ways and you get different numbers.
2. Different reference points. Because 100 is defined by whichever population a source treats as the anchor, the same US performance can read as 98 against one reference and 100 against another.
3. Different vintages of data. Some tables lean on studies from the 1990s or 2000s; others fold in newer samples. Given the Flynn effect (below), the age of the data alone can move a country a point or two.

So when you see the US ranked 30th on one page and 46th on another, you are usually not looking at a real change in Americans. You are looking at two spreadsheets built from different ingredients.

How the US compares internationally

The US sits comfortably in the upper-middle band of the global rankings, but not at the top. In the commonly circulated 2026 tables, the highest reported national averages belong to a cluster of East Asian and city-state economies, while the US lands just a touch below the top-tier Western European countries in most versions of the list.

Even here, a caveat matters more than the ranking. The gaps between most of these countries are only a few points, which is well inside the noise of how shakily the numbers are assembled. The countries at the very top tend to share features that these tests reward heavily: strong, exam-focused education systems, near-universal schooling, good early-childhood nutrition, and deep familiarity with standardized-test formats. Those are advantages in test conditions, not proof of some fixed national trait.

State-level variation inside the US

Averages exist inside the US too, and popular roundups love to rank the 50 states. I will not reproduce a full table, because the state figures rest on even thinner data than the national one, but the pattern people cite is consistent: states in the Northeast and Upper Midwest tend to post higher averages, while some states in the Deep South and Southwest post lower ones, typically within a band of roughly a dozen points top to bottom.

The honest reading of that spread is socioeconomic, not innate. State-level differences track closely with median income, education spending, share of adults with college degrees, childhood poverty rates, and health outcomes. When researchers look at apparent gaps between any groups inside the US, the differences are best explained by unequal access to schooling, nutrition, health care, and test familiarity, plus the well-documented cultural bias baked into the tests themselves, not by anything intrinsic to the people. A state's average is a mirror of its opportunities, not a verdict on its residents.

The Flynn effect: a moving target

Any snapshot of "the average IQ" is really a snapshot in time, because raw test performance drifts. Across the 20th century, scores rose steadily, a phenomenon named the Flynn effect after researcher James Flynn. His original American analysis found gains of roughly 13.8 points between 1932 and 1978, on the order of three points per decade. Because tests get restandardized periodically so the mean stays pinned at 100, a person scoring 100 today would likely have scored well above 100 against 1950s norms.

There is a twist that matters in 2026: the rise has stalled and, in the US, appears to be partially reversing. A widely reported Northwestern University analysis of a large US sample found declining scores between 2006 and 2018 in most categories tested, with one category still improving. Similar reversals have shown up in Norwegian, Danish, and other datasets. The reasons are debated and unsettled, so I will not pretend to a clean explanation. The takeaway for this article is narrower: the "average American IQ" is not a fixed landmark. It is a number that has been moving, and the direction it moves depends on the decade and the specific skill being measured.

Read these numbers with heavy caveats

I want to be blunt about the data quality, because most articles bury it. The national-IQ figures that anchor every "US average IQ" claim have been criticized hard by researchers.

• Critics including psychologist Richard Nisbett have argued the datasets rely on small, haphazard, and unrepresentative samples, sometimes just a few dozen people, sometimes only children.
• A 2020 analysis by Sear and colleagues concluded that national-IQ datasets "do not provide accurate, unbiased or comparable measures of cognitive ability worldwide."
• In July 2020 the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association issued a formal statement opposing use of Lynn's national-IQ dataset, concluding that analyses relying on it are "unsound."

None of that means Americans have no measurable cognitive skills, or that IQ tests are meaningless for individuals. It means the country-comparison layer is far weaker than its tidy tables suggest. And a bedrock statistical fact should reset your instincts here: the variation among individuals inside any country dwarfs the variation between country averages. Knowing that the US average is "about 98" tells you almost nothing about any particular American you will ever meet.

FAQ

Q: What is the average IQ in the USA?

A: It is commonly estimated at around 98, on a scale where the global reference average is set to 100. Different sources report figures between 97 and 100 because they use different tests, reference points, and data vintages. All of these are contested estimates, not precise measurements, so treat 98 as a rough midpoint rather than an exact value.

Q: Where does the US rank compared to other countries?

A: Usually in the upper-middle band, roughly 30th, though some tables place it as low as the mid-40s. The top of the list is typically led by Hong Kong, South Korea, China, and Japan. The gaps between most developed countries are only a few points, which is well within the margin of error for how loosely these numbers are assembled.

Q: Is the average American IQ going up or down?

A: It rose for most of the 20th century (the Flynn effect) but appears to be partially reversing in recent US data. A Northwestern University study found declines between 2006 and 2018 in most categories tested, with one still rising. The causes are debated and unresolved, so any claim of a steady trend in either direction should be read cautiously.

Q: How is my personal IQ different from a national average?

A: Your score reflects you; a national average is a fragile statistical summary of scattered samples. Individual variation within any country is far larger than the differences between country averages, so a national figure cannot predict any one person's result. You can take a scored assessment yourself to see where you land against a standardized 100-point scale.

References

• Nations and IQ — Wikipedia
• The Intelligence of Nations — Richard Lynn & David Becker (Ulster Institute, PDF)
• Americans' IQ scores are lower in some areas, higher in one — Northwestern Now
• Flynn effect — Wikipedia

Last updated: July 13, 2026