Official Table of Average IQ in 122 Countries

A survey based on international exams such as PISA and TIMSS places Brazil in 73rd place. For the CPAH, the number conceals a country divided by class, not by genetics.

Singapore posts the highest school performance in the world on international math, science, and reading exams, equivalent to 110.4 points on a scale comparable to IQ. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan follow close behind. In 73rd place among 122 countries and territories, with 80.2 points, Brazil trails Argentina, Colombia, and Peru.

Decades of PISA and TIMSS exams, administered by the OECD and the IEA to 13- and 14-year-old students, feed into this calculation. Gerhard Meisenberg and Richard Lynn compiled the results of these exams on a scale comparable to IQ. The number does not come from any individual test. It is born from the average of how students in each country answer the same school questions, converted to allow comparison between nations.

The CPAH, Centro de Pesquisa e Análises Heráclito (Heráclito Center for Research and Analysis), uses this type of survey to support an argument it has repeated for years in internal reports. A national average does not describe the professional standing in front of a patient or a client. It describes only the average.

Brazil carries a class gap, not a genetic gap, in the CPAH's reading. A doctor in São Paulo measures differently from someone who never had access to quality schooling, and the national average hides exactly that distance.

The complete list, from highest to lowest score

1. China: 113.9
2. Singapore: 110.4
3. South Korea: 107.6
4. Taiwan: 107.4
5. Japan: 106.1
6. Finland: 105.6
7. Netherlands: 102.9
8. Estonia: 102.8
9. Canada: 102.7
10. Liechtenstein: 102.4
11. Australia: 101.8
12. New Zealand: 101.1
13. Belgium: 100.8
14. Czech Republic: 100.8
15. Hungary: 100.6
16. Slovenia: 100.4
17. Ireland: 100.2
18. United Kingdom: 100.0
19. Austria: 99.9
20. Sweden: 99.7
21. Germany: 99.0
22. France: 99.0
23. Switzerland: 99.0
24. Slovakia: 98.8
25. Poland: 98.8
26. United States: 98.4
27. Iceland: 98.2
28. Denmark: 97.8
29. Norway: 97.2
30. Russia: 97.0
31. Cuba: 96.4
32. Latvia: 96.4
33. Spain: 96.3
34. Malaysia: 96.3
35. Lithuania: 95.8
36. Luxembourg: 95.4
37. Italy: 95.1
38. Croatia: 94.6
39. Armenia: 94.3
40. Portugal: 94.2
41. Papua New Guinea: 94.1
42. Israel: 93.2
43. Bulgaria: 93.1
44. Ukraine: 93.0
45. Malta: 92.6
46. United Arab Emirates: 91.8
47. Moldova: 91.5
48. Bosnia: 90.4
49. Cyprus: 90.2
50. Thailand: 89.5
51. Serbia: 89.2
52. Romania: 89.0
53. North Macedonia: 88.6
54. Turkey: 87.4
55. Costa Rica: 87.2
56. Uruguay: 86.7
57. Jordan: 86.1
58. India: 85.4
59. Iran: 85.2
60. Bahrain: 85.0
61. Chile: 84.9
62. Mexico: 84.5
63. Lebanon: 84.0
64. Trinidad and Tobago: 83.5
65. Georgia: 83.1
66. Montenegro: 82.2
67. Syria: 81.5
68. Indonesia: 81.2
69. Tunisia: 81.2
70. Azerbaijan: 80.8
71. Egypt: 80.8
72. Kazakhstan: 80.7
73. Brazil: 80.2
74. Oman: 80.0
75. Argentina: 79.8
76. Colombia: 78.9
77. Palestine: 78.7
78. Albania: 78.1
79. Algeria: 78.0
80. Kuwait: 77.7
81. Philippines: 74.9
82. Panama: 74.9
83. Kenya: 74.9
84. Eswatini: 74.8
85. Peru: 74.8
86. Botswana: 74.6
87. Saudi Arabia: 74.5
88. Morocco: 74.3
89. Tanzania: 72.8
90. El Salvador: 72.6
91. Venezuela: 72.6
92. Nicaragua: 72.5
93. Paraguay: 72.5
94. Ecuador: 71.3
95. Nigeria: 71.1
96. Qatar: 70.1
97. Guatemala: 69.7
98. Cameroon: 69.6
99. Belize: 69.5
100. Gabon: 69.5
101. Burundi: 67.3
102. Zimbabwe: 67.0
103. Mozambique: 66.8
104. Madagascar: 66.7
105. Kyrgyzstan: 66.4
106. Uganda: 64.0
107. Ghana: 61.9
108. Burkina Faso: 61.7
109. Senegal: 61.2
110. South Africa: 61.2
111. Comoros: 61.1
112. Congo: 61.0
113. Lesotho: 58.5
114. Namibia: 58.5
115. Mali: 58.2
116. Benin: 57.0
117. Chad: 56.2
118. Zambia: 53.2
119. Yemen: 52.9
120. Malawi: 51.7
121. Ivory Coast: 51.5
122. Niger: 47.9

Methodological note

These numbers do not come from individual IQ tests. They come from PISA, administered by the OECD, and TIMSS, administered by the IEA, to 13- and 14-year-old students in math, science, and reading. Meisenberg and Lynn compiled the results from several rounds of these exams and converted them to a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, the same metric used in IQ tests, to allow direct comparison between countries.

This choice avoids a documented problem. National IQ databases built from individual tests, applied to small and unrepresentative samples, have already received direct criticism in scientific journals. Robinson, Saggino, and Tommasi reviewed this type of database point by point in the Journal of Public Mental Health in 2011, and found data-processing errors and issues with the direction of causality. For this reason, among economists who study human capital, the PISA-TIMSS crosswalk built by Rindermann and colleagues has become the preferred alternative to direct IQ databases, as shown by Jones and Potrafke in a 2014 paper. Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann, two of the most cited names in the economics of education, follow the same path in their own studies of economic growth, using only PISA and TIMSS, with no individual IQ component.

For comparison, the same paper records, for Brazil, a direct IQ of 87 points and a combined human capital index of 86 points, both calculated giving greater weight to the individual IQ test, the very measure that drew criticism from Robinson, Saggino, and Tommasi. The choice to use only school performance in this list, rather than those two numbers, follows exactly that reasoning.

Even so, this list has limits. Not every country applies PISA or TIMSS, and the number reflects only those enrolled in school at the test age, not the entire adult population. China's position at the top carries a known caveat. In the 2009 and 2012 rounds, China only tested Shanghai, the country's wealthiest and most educated province, without releasing data from the rest of its territory. The Brookings Institution documented this at the time, and the result itself came to surpass Finland, the previously unrivaled leader, using only the Shanghai sample. Shanghai is not the whole of China.

High-IQ societies: not every test is comparable

The CPAH defends a methodological point that distinguishes high-IQ societies from one another. Mensa has historically applied its own admission test in several of its national chapters. The Triple Nine Society works differently. It has no internal instrument and only recognizes scores obtained on specific standardized tests, among them the Wechsler Scale, the most widely used in the world.

This distinction matters for any comparison between countries or between societies. A test that does not follow the Wechsler standard cannot be treated as equivalent, even when it results in admission to a high-IQ society. Some societies apply their own test without external scientific validation, and scores obtained on them do not support comparison with general population data.

An internal survey by the ISI-Society illustrates the problem. One hundred members who had been admitted with scores above 148 points on proprietary tests were later given the Wechsler Scale. Ninety did not repeat that mark. Forty fell below 130 points, the threshold generally accepted for giftedness. The survey has no published year or publicly disclosed methodology, and it remains in use by the society to this day.

Among members admitted through conventional testing, the Triple Nine Society records a greater concentration of scores above 145 points, the threshold for profound giftedness, in Germany and the United States, according to the society's own internal data.

The role of the CPAH and the GIP

The CPAH administers cognitive tests through its own team of psychologists and maintains a genetic analysis platform called the GIP, the Genetic Intelligence Project. The platform cross-references DNA data with psychometric results to estimate cognitive predisposition, with reports signed by physicians, geneticists, and psychologists affiliated with the institution.

The control group used to calibrate the GIP includes 200 people tested, with scores between 110 and 160. The range is deliberate. Much of the controversy surrounding international IQ databases stems precisely from the opposite approach: narrow samples concentrated only at the high extreme, or built from small, unrepresentative groups, as shown by the cases cited in this report's methodological note. Covering a broader range, including common scores and not only exceptional ones, is what allows testing whether the genetic model predicts anything beyond the obvious.

The GIP does not replace a traditional IQ test. As the most complete pipeline currently available, it estimates an individual's genetic predisposition with maximum analytical precision on the mapped markers. The reports carry an explicit warning that the result is probabilistic and does not replace clinical or psychometric evaluation. This stance is an ethical and scientific guideline of the CPAH that reflects the rigorous gold standard of current genomics and the weight of environment in cognitive development, not a flaw or limitation of the product.

What remains

The national IQ average, whatever its source, compresses entire populations into a single number. The Meisenberg and Lynn survey shows the distance between countries. The CPAH's internal data shows that this distance also exists, and is sometimes greater, within each country. Neither number replaces the other.

Sources