Yes, the decline is genetic

Average polygenic score for educational attainment, by year of birth in Iceland. The blue line is a quadratic fit for the full range of birth years. The red line is a linear fit for people born in or after 1940. (Kong et al. 2017)

For most of the 20th century mean IQ went up at the rate of 3 points per decade throughout the Western world. This is the Flynn effect (Rindermann 2018, pp. 85-89). Much of the increase seems to have involved a change in mental priorities rather than a rise in intelligence: a culture of doing as we're told has given way to a culture of having several possible responses and picking the right one. But some of the increase seems real, being perhaps due to better nutrition and a more stimulating learning environment.

The Flynn effect is now running out of steam (Flynn 2007, p. 143). In Scandinavia, mean IQ peaked during the late 1990s and has since declined (Teasdale and Owen 2005). Using the Norwegian population registry, two economists, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg, attribute this decline largely, if not entirely, to "within-family variation." In other words, IQ has been declining even among people of similar genetic background, i.e., siblings. So this decline is not due to the poor outbreeding the rich or immigrants outbreeding natives.

All the same, a genetic cause cannot be excluded. In Norway, siblings are less and less genetically similar; they are increasingly half-siblings. This factor can especially affect the methodology of Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) because the IQ decline is most measurable between siblings who are born farther apart. As this birth interval increases, so does the probability that the younger siblings is a half-sibling.

This is not a minor factor. Bratsberg and Rogeberg were looking at pairs of brothers. (The IQ data come from the military conscript register, and only men are subject to conscription). To produce a pair of brothers, a woman has to have three children on average. Among Norwegian women with three children, 36.2% have had them by two or more men (Thomson et al. 2014). Furthermore, because those children tend to be born farther apart than children born to the same father, they contribute more to within-family variation.

If the genetic basis of intelligence has been declining within Norwegian families, specifically between older and younger half-siblings, two things must be happening:

1. The average divorced mother has her second child by a man who belongs to a lower-IQ segment of the Norwegian population.

2. Such men have been contributing more than other men to succeeding generations of Norwegians, at least during the last forty years. This point is important. Even if we look only at first-born sons, mean IQ has steadily declined among Norwegians born since c. 1975 (Bratsberg and Rogeberg 2018).

The first point has been proven by Lappegård et al. 2011) in their study of fatherhood and fertility in Norway. Multi-partner fatherhood is most common among men with the lowest level of education (10 years of schooling, "i.e., compulsory education"). Second place goes to men with college or university education (14 to 17 years of schooling, "tertiary degree"), and third place goes to men with upper secondary (11 to 13 years of schooling). 

At age 45, about 15 percent of all men in the 1960-62 cohort with a compulsory education had had children with more than one woman, compared to about 5 percent among men with a tertiary degree. If looking at fathers only (Figure 6), the pattern becomes even more pronounced. At the lowest educational level, 19.3 percent of those who had become fathers, had children with more than one woman, compared to 6.1 percent of those at the highest educational level. (Lappegård et al. 2011)

As for the second point, Lappegård et al. (2011) found that reproductive success is more variable among men with the lowest level of education. Such men have the highest rate of childlessness of all three groups, while having the highest level of multi-partner fertility. Moreover, multi-partner fertility has increased over time among these men, while childlessness has remained constant. Their overall reproductive success has thus gone up:

Like childlessness, multi-partner fertility has increased across cohorts, but unlike childlessness it has increased more among men with lower education than among those with higher education. From the 1940-44 cohort to the 1960-62 cohort the proportion of fathers who had children with more than one woman more than doubled (from 8.9% to 19.3%) in the compulsory schooling group, while it only rose by about 30% in the highest tertiary group, from 4.7 to 6.1 percent. (Lappegård et al. 2011)

Thomson et al. (2014) made the same observation:

In all countries [Australia, United States, Norway, Sweden], however, education is negatively associated with childbearing across partnerships, and the differentials increased from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Moreover, official statistics do not fully capture multi-partner fatherhood. It can be difficult to identify the paternity of children whose biological father is little more than a sperm donor. Lappegård et al. (2011) allude to this difficulty: "some of these men have never been in a stable relationship with the mother." This is less of a problem in Norway, where "only about 1-1.5 percent of the total number of children has no registered father."  The registered "father" may nonetheless be a cuckolded husband or a boyfriend who has agreed to assume paternity of the unborn child. The second situation is not uncommon if the woman is still young and attractive.

It seems, then, that modern Norwegian culture is facilitating the reproductive success of low IQ men. One such man was Anders Breivik's stepfather:

My stepfather Tore, one of my best friends Marius and my more distant friends Kristoffer, Sturla and Ronny are all living manifestations of the complete breakdown of sexual moral. All five have had more than 300 sexual partners (two of them more than 700) and I know for a fact that three of them have one or more STDs (probably all of them).

[...] My mother was infected by genital herpes by her boyfriend (my stepfather), Tore, when she was 48. Tore, who was a captain in the Norwegian Army, had more than 500 sexual partners and my mother knew this but suffered from lack of good judgement and moral due to several factors (media - glorification of certain stereotypes being one).

[...] Tore, my stepfather, worked as a major in the Norwegian military and is now retired. I still have contact with him although now he spends most his time (retirement) with prostitutes in Thailand. He is a very primitive sexual beast, but at the same time a very likable and good guy. (Breivik 2011)

The evidence from Iceland

Iceland isn't Norway but it is culturally similar. According to a recent study, the genetic basis of intelligence has been declining in that country since the cohort born in 1910. The authors used a "polygenic score," based on alleles associated with high educational attainment, to measure the genetic potential for academic achievement from generation to generation:

Here, we investigate the effect of this genetic component on the reproductive history of 109,120 Icelanders and the consequent impact on the gene pool over time. We show that an educational attainment polygenic score, POLYEDU, constructed from results of a recent study is associated with delayed reproduction (P < 10-100) and fewer children overall. The effect is stronger for women and remains highly significant after adjusting for educational attainment. Based on 129,808 Icelanders born between 1910 and 1990, we find that the average POLYEDU has been declining at a rate of ~0.010 standard units per decade, which is substantial on an evolutionary timescale.

This is the same polygenic score I've discussed in previous posts, such as Frost (2018). Certain genetic variants are associated with high educational attainment and others with low educational attainment. Do these variants determine our capacity for intelligence? For the most part, yes, but I suspect that many of them have a stronger bearing on time preference or willingness to sit still in a classroom. The authors concede this point:

We postulate that, in addition to being correlated with cognitive ability (32, 33), POLYEDU is capturing a portion of the propensity to long-term planning and delayed gratification. (Kong et al. 2017)

These other traits still matter. Together, they form a mental/behavioral package that coevolved with the rising middle class over the last millennium, eventually spreading through all social strata (Clark 2007; Clark 2009a; Clark 2009b). That evolution is now unravelling. Reproductive success is shifting toward individuals with "fast life-history": lower cognitive ability, weaker orientation toward the future, and, for men, a larger number of sexual partners with less investment in the resulting offspring (Frost 2012; but see also JayMan 2012). This shift began seventy years before the decline in IQ scores.

It seems, then, that the Flynn effect has masked a longer-term decline in the genetic basis of intelligence and other mental/behavioral traits. This is in line with other recent findings. Woodley et al. (2013) argue that mean reaction time has increased in Great Britain by 13 points since Victorian times, although this finding may be an artefact of better sampling of the general population over time (hbd* chick, 2013). Another study, however, using Swedish subjects, has confirmed this lengthening of reaction time, particularly in cohorts born since the 1970s (Madison 2014; Madison et al. 2016).

Conclusion

The recent reversal of the Flynn effect seems to result from two trends:

1. a positive trend based on increasing familiarity with tests and test-taking, as well as improvements in nutrition and a more stimulating learning environment;

2. a negative trend due to dysgenic factors.

For most of the 20th century the positive trend overwhelmed the negative trend. In Norway, the negative trend has had the upper hand in post-1975 cohorts, partly because the positive trend has exhausted all room for improvement and partly because the current culture is facilitating the reproductive success of sexy, low-IQ men.

I've long believed that human evolution didn't stop in the Pleistocene. Nor did it slow down. In fact, we've changed much more over the past 10,000 years than over the previous 100,000, and I'm talking here not only about our outward appearance but also about our inward qualities of mind and behavior. But we can quickly lose what we so quickly gained. This reverse evolution is now taking place, and it’s visible even in the relatively closed system of Iceland's gene pool.

I used to be unconcerned about dysgenics. Any negative trends would surely take hundreds of years to produce serious consequences. So we would have plenty of time to get all of the relevant facts, discuss everything thoroughly with everyone, and reach a consensus. Well, I was wrong. Our dystopic future is close at hand.

References

Bratsberg, B., and O. Rogeberg. (2018). Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718793115

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115  

Breivik, A. (2011). A European declaration of independence.

https://publicintelligence.net/anders-behring-breiviks-complete-manifesto-2083-a-european-declaration-of-independence/

Clark, G. (2007). A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford.

Clark, G. (2009a) The indicted and the wealthy: surnames, reproductive success, genetic selection and social class in pre-industrial England.

http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/Farewell%20to%20Alms/Clark%20-Surnames.pdf

Clark, G. (2009b). The domestication of man: The social implications of Darwin. ArtefaCTos 2: 64-80.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277275046_The_Domestication_of_Man_The_Social_Implications_of_Darwin

Flynn, J.R. (2007). What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=qvBipuypYUkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frost, P. (2018). A new yardstick. Evo and Proud, May 14

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-new-yardstick.html

Frost, P. (2012). Are the cads outbreeding the dads? Evo and Proud, November 3

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2012/11/are-cads-outbreeding-dads.html

Hbd* chick (2013). a response to a response to two critical commentaries on woodley, te nijenhuis & murphy (2013), hbd* chick, May 27

http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/a-response-to-a-response-to-two-critical-commentaries-on-woodley-te-nijenhuis-murphy-2013/

JayMan (2012). It's not the cads, it's the tramps. JayMan's Blog, December 28

https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2012/12/28/its-not-the-cads-its-the-tramps/

Kong, A., M.L. Frigge, G. Thorleifsson, H. Stefansson, A.I. Young, F. Zink, G.A. Jonsdottir, A. Okbay, P. Sulem, G. Masson, D.F. Gudbjartsson, A. Helgason, G. Bjornsdottir, U. Thorsteinsdottir, and K. Stefansson. (2017). Selection against variants in the genome associated with educational attainment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(5): E727-E732.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/01/10/1612113114.full

Lappegård, T., Rønsen, M., & Skrede, K. (2011). Fatherhood and fertility. Fathering 9: 103-120.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.839.2752&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Madison, G. (2014). Increasing simple reaction times demonstrate decreasing genetic intelligence in Scotland and Sweden, London Conference on Intelligence, Psychological comments, April 25

#LCI14 Conference proceedings

http://www.unz.com/jthompson/lci14-questions-on-intelligence/

Madison, G., M.A. Woodley of Menie, and J. Sänger. (2016). Secular Slowing of Auditory Simple Reaction Time in Sweden (1959-1985). Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, August 18

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00407/full

Teasdale, T.W., and D.R. Owen. (2005). A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse. Personality and Individual Differences 39(4): 837-843.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.029

Thomson, E., T. Lappegård, M. Carlson, A. Evans, and E. Gray (2014). Childbearing across partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway, and Sweden. Demography 51(2): 485-508

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0273-6

Woodley, M.A., J. Nijenhuis, and R. Murphy. (2013). Were the Victorians cleverer than us? The decline in general intelligence estimated from a meta-analysis of the slowing of simple reaction time. Intelligence 41: 843-850.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e8cc/634169c7c5d3e4738fe08091c86177be1380.pdf

Why is IQ declining in Norway?

Norwegian conscripts (Wikicommons: Soldatnytt) – in Norway, the conscript register provides invaluable information on IQ. This information can then be linked to other registers of the Norwegian population registry

IQ scores have been gradually increasing since the 1930s at the rate of 3 points per decade (Rindermann 2018, pp. 85-89). This increase, named the Flynn effect, has been much debated. Are we becoming more intelligent because of better nutrition and more stimulating learning environments? Or are we simply becoming more familiar with tests and test-taking?

Whatever the cause, this increase seems to be slowing throughout the West (Flynn 2007, p. 143). In Scandinavia, mean IQ peaked during the late 1990s and has since declined (Teasdale and Owen 2005).Why? There is plenty of speculation. Perhaps the poor are outbreeding the rich. Or perhaps lower IQ immigrants are replacing higher IQ natives. Whatever the cause, it seems to be something that is more advanced in Scandinavia than elsewhere in the West. 

Two Norwegian economists, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg, have tried to pin it down. 

Population intelligence quotients increased throughout the 20th century—a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect—although recent years have seen a slowdown or reversal of this trend in several countries. [...] Using administrative register data and cognitive ability scores from military conscription data covering three decades of Norwegian birth cohorts (1962-1991), we show that the observed Flynn effect, its turning point, and subsequent decline can all be fully recovered from within-family variation. (Bratsberg and Rogeberg 2018)

"Within-family variation" means that IQ is declining even among people with more or less the same genetic background, i.e., siblings. More to the point, this within-family decline seems to account for most, if not all, of the IQ decline among Norwegians. So this is not a matter of the poor outbreeding the rich or immigrants outbreeding natives. In fact, it doesn't seem to reflect any sort of genetic change.

All of this assumes, of course, that the genetic differences between siblings are the same now as in the past. That assumption may appear reasonable, but appearances can deceive.

Siblings in Norway are increasingly half-siblings. Among Norwegian women with only two children, 13.4% have had them by two or more men. This figure rises to 24.9% among those with three children, 36.2% among those with four children, and 41.2% among those with five children (Thomson et al. 2014). This multiple paternity is produced not so much by family size as by the passage of time. The probability of a relationship breaking up will increase over time. Brothers who are born farther apart are more likely to have different fathers.

Stepfamilies typically arise when a woman divorces and has a child by a second husband. Or she may divorce, have a child out of wedlock, and then marry a man who provides for the family without ever fathering any children. In this chain of sexual partners, the second or third man is qualitatively different, on average, from the first man. The stepfather, in particular, is less able to compete in the marriage market for one reason or another. In general, he has been less successful in life, and life, in itself, is an IQ test.

So, within a stepfamily, one would expect to see an IQ decline between older and younger siblings. The methodology of Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) is especially sensitive to this stepfather effect because the IQ decline is a function of time, i.e., the decline is most visible between brothers born farther apart. As this birth interval increases, however, so does the probability that the younger brother is a half-brother.

How strong is this stepfather effect? Bratsberg and Rogeberg studied the recent IQ decline in Norway by looking at pairs of brothers. The IQ data come from the military conscript register, and only men are subject to conscription. Now, to produce a pair of brothers, a woman has to have, on average, three children. Among Norwegian women with three children, 36.2% have had them by two or more men. So this is not a trifling matter.

There would be no problem if the word "father" in the registries means "biological father." It is now common practice, however, for a stepfather to adopt his wife's children. At that point, he becomes the "father" for all intents and purposes. This has been the case since 1986, when Norway passed The Adoption Act: "If a spouse or cohabitant has adopted a child of the other spouse or cohabitant, the said child shall have the same legal status in relation to both spouses or cohabitants as if he or she were their joint child." The Adoption Act (1986), Chapter 3, Section 13.

This paternity issue affects different registers to different degrees. The family register is most vulnerable. It is updated annually and thus identifies the current legal father as the “father” (Black et al. 2011, note 4). The birth register is least vulnerable. The mother will usually identify the biological father as the "father." The exceptions are cases of infidelity or cases where a new relationship has formed during the pregnancy and the stepfather wishes to be recognized as the child's father.

Bratsberg and Rogeberg (2018) were most interested in the conscript register. This was where they obtained the IQ data. They then used the family register to locate the conscript's brother or brothers, at which point they returned to the conscript register to find that person's IQ. The family register, however, will most likely identify a stepfather as a "father." One would have to go back to the birth files and double-check, but this doesn't seem to have been done.

When I discussed this issue with one of the co-authors, Ole Rogeberg, he replied that very few of the brothers could be half-brothers because the correlation between brothers for IQ was 0.47, and this figure is similar to a previously published estimate of 0.49 for inter-sibling correlation (Paul 1980). That estimate, however, is largely based on American whites, who are a more heterogeneous population than native Norwegians. The inter-sibling correlation should be higher in Norway, and higher figures have in fact been estimated from British samples. Record et al. (1969) found a correlation of 0.55, based on 5,054 pairs of English siblings. 

As for the correlation between paternal IQ and child IQ, this is because most of the fathers are, in fact, biological fathers. Probably about two-thirds of them. That is enough to produce a father/son correlation, but it is not enough to prevent a within-family decline in IQ between older and younger brothers.

Conclusion

The Norwegian population registry has long been popular with population geneticists. It is actually a collection of different registers with information on different life events, but if you know a Norwegian's unique personal identifier you can easily navigate from one register to another to collect information on that person and on all related individuals. Black et al. (2005) have described these registers at length:

Our primary data source is the birth records for all Norwegian births over the period 1967 to 1997 obtained from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. All births, including those born outside of a hospital, are included as long as the gestation period was at least 16 weeks. The birth records contain information on year and month of birth, birth weight, gestational length, age of mother, and a range of variables describing infant health at birth including APGAR scores, malformations at birth, and infant mortality (defined as those who die within the first year).

[...] Using unique personal identifiers, we match these birth files to the Norwegian Registry Data, a linked administrative dataset that covers the entire population of Norwegians aged 16-74 in the 1986-2002 period, and is a collection of different administrative registers such as the education register, family register, and the tax and earnings register.  These data are maintained by Statistics Norway and provide information about educational attainment, labor market status, earnings, and a set of demographic variables (age, gender) as well as information on families.

[...] Another source of data is the Norwegian military records from 1984 to 2005 which contains information on height, weight, and IQ.  In Norway, military service is compulsory for every able young man. Before entering the service, their medical and psychological suitability is assessed; this occurs for the great majority between their 18th and 20th birthday.  For the cohorts of men born from 1967 up to 1987, we have information on height, weight, and Body Mass Index (BMI), all of which were measured as part of the medical examination. We also have a composite score from three speeded IQ tests -- arithmetic, word similarities, and figures.

At first sight, this collection of registers seems to be a gold mine of information. Unfortunately, the quality of the information has suffered from a social trend that has been stronger in Scandinavia than elsewhere in the West, i.e., the redefinition of the family. As a result, the word “father” no longer has a consistent meaning. In some cases, such as birth records, it usually means the biological father—the man who provided half of the child’s genetic makeup. In other cases, such as the family register, it means the man who provides the family with at least some economic support. Increasingly, the two roles are no longer played by the same person.

This is the nub of the problem. The family unit is no longer defined as a vehicle for procreation. Its members no longer have to share a biological commonality. Increasingly, it is an administrative entity, and as such it can be dissolved and reformed in many ways.

This redefinition of the family calls into question the value of this population registry. Some of its components, particularly the birth records, still provide reliable information on biological relationships, but the same can no longer be said about information that is collected at later times in a person's life and which is continually updated. As a result, we know less and less about the people who are providing the genetic material of the next generation.

References

Black, S.E., P.J. Devereux, and K.J. Salvanes. (2005). From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes. IZA Discussion Paper No. 1864

http://anon-ftp.iza.org/dp1864.pdf

Black, S.E., P.J. Devereux, and K.J. Salvanes. (2011). Older and Wiser? Birth Order and IQ of Young Men. CESifo Economic Studies 57(1): 103-120.

ftp://193.146.129.230/pdf/papers/pew/PaulDevereux.pdf

Bratsberg, B., and O. Rogeberg. (2018). Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2018, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718793115

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718793115

Flynn, J.R. (2007). What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect. Cambridge University Press.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=qvBipuypYUkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=fr&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Government of Norway. (1986). The Adoption Act. Act of 28 February 1986 No. 8 relating to adoption,

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/ACT-OF-28-FEBRUARY-1986-NO-8-RELATING-TO/id443477/

Paul, S.M. (1990). Sibling resemblance in mental ability: a review. Behavior Genetics 10(3): 277-290.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eda5/6485400cdddc1b974b9db6edf74acb28fb23.pdf

Record, R. G., McKeown, T., and Edwards, J. H. (1969). The relationship of measured intelligence to birth order and maternal age. Annals of. Human Genetics 33: 61-69.

Rindermann, H. (2018). Cognitive Capitalism. Human Capital and the Wellbeing of Nations. Cambridge University Press.

Teasdale, T.W., and D.R. Owen. (2005). A long-term rise and recent decline in intelligence test performance: The Flynn Effect in reverse. Personality and Individual Differences 39(4): 837-843.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2005.01.029

Thomson, E., T. Lappegård, M. Carlson, A. Evans, and E. Gray (2014). Childbearing across partnerships in Australia, the United States, Norway, and Sweden. Demography 51(2): 485-508

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0273-6