Eugenics: Economics for the Long Run

Eugenics: Economics for the Long Run By Edward M. Miller, PhD

This paper originally appeared in Research in Biopolitics, Vol. 5, Steven A. Peterson
and Al Somit, Eds., Greenwich, Connecticut; JAI Press, 1997, p. 391-416.

Paper requested for Recent Explorations in Biology and Politics.
Al Somit & Steven A. Peterson, Ed. JAI Press

Eugenics: Economics for the Long Run
by Edward M. Miller, PhD
Department of Economics and Finance
University of New Orleans
New Orleans, La. 70148

April 8, 1997

There is a simple economic argument for eugenics. Eugenics is defined as efforts to improve the gene pool in a particular population. Standard micro-economic theories of wages hold that a worker's wage equals the marginal product of his working time. Much textbook discussion of his marginal product focus on the quantities of cooperating factors: capital, land, and natural resources which labor has to work with. However, another important determinant is the worker's attributes and abilities. There is evidence that these are strongly affect by his genes (see below). It follows that efforts to maximize a nation's standard of living should try to improve its citizens' genetic quality, especially with regard to intelligence and other economically important traits. Improving the genetic quality of citizens calls for having those carrying the genes for desirable traits (as evidenced by their possession of the traits themselves) producing more than their proportionate share of that nation's children.

A secondary economic goal is to minimize the externalities in the economy resulting from the activities of one citizen affecting another citizen. An example would be minimizing the amounts that must be expended on welfare for those unable to earn the socially established minimum standard of living. Such people may be on welfare because of disease and handicaps, because low intelligence or personality problems make it hard to find and retain jobs, or because of drug addiction and alcoholism. Many of these conditions have an important genetic component.

Another important externality is criminal activity. Again it is known that from adoption studies and other sources that criminality has a significant genetic component (Rowe & Osgood, 1984; Lynn, 1996). As a result, an eugenics program can hope to reduce crime rates.

Notice the above arguments hold regardless of whether the intelligence of the population is believed to rising, falling, or remaining constant. If the intelligence is falling and expected to continue falling, it does follow that eventually something must be done or the maintenance of a modern industrial civilization will prove impossible. The available evidence is that those of higher IQ (who typically have genes that make for higher IQs) are having smaller families than those of lower IQ's (Herrenstein & Murray, 1994; Lynn, 1996; Miller, 1997a).

If a program of eugenics is to be introduced into modern countries, it will most likely be as a byproduct of births being restricted to restrain population growth. Thus, it will be argued below that in the long run society is faced with a choice between having the population restrained by misery, and having it restrained by conscious restrictions of births. Once the idea of preventing some births is accepted, it will then be natural to discuss the question of which births. It is then very likely that decisions will be based at least partially on preventing the births that are most likely to result in what that society regards as low quality citizens. This will be a eugenics program, although as will be pointed out some of the gains may arise from insuring that those children born are born into the families that provide better environments.

To introduce the case for eugenics consider Diagram 1. [Not available. Ed.] There is a simple income distribution on it with income increasing from left to right. Also shown is a certain level of income below which people fail to reproduce themselves. This is shown as a straight line. However, in practice it is probably a band, with women slightly below the line having only slightly less than two children surviving to adulthood. Women far below the line have relatively few children surviving to adulthood. Above the line the differences in survival to adulthood probabilities are probably small. But in the interests of simplicity, these complexities can not be shown.

What are the conditions for long run equilibrium? The first condition is that the population be stable. Obviously a continually growing population eventually exceeds the resources of the earth, or of the home country. This is not the place to get into debates about just what these limits are, or exactly when the world as a whole or particular country will come up against these limits. The purpose here is to show how societies will differ depending on how the state of zero population growth is achieved, and whether it is done by misery of the Malthusian type, or by eugenics.

It is important that the world is asymmetric, such that being far above the line probably does less for childhood survival than being below it. The diagram shows how with unrestrained fertility, the more unequal the income distribution, the higher the average income. The reason is that for population growth to be constrained by poverty to zero, there must be many below the poverty line. A given level of misery among those whose reproduction is being restrained by poverty is consistent with many different standards of living for those above the line. A more unequal distribution of income permits the average to be further above the line, consistent with any given amount of poverty, including that amount of poverty needed to keep the population stable.

If the distribution of income is to be completely equal, the average woman has to be at the poverty line, such that poverty prevents her from raising only slightly more than a single female offspring to reproductive age. It takes extreme poverty to achieve this outcome. Even in many poor third world countries the population is growing, and the typical woman much more than reproduces herself.

If income becomes more unequal, it becomes possible for most of the population to be far above the poverty line, while still allowing a high enough fraction of the population to be far enough below the poverty line to prevent population growth. This leads to the very unpleasant conclusion that for a nation to enjoy a high average income is consistent with that nation having a stable population only if that income is unevenly distributed. Only with high inequality will enough of the population be far enough below the poverty line to prevent population growth.

Without birth control, any attempt to raise the poor's living standard merely increases their children's survival rates, increases the population, and pulls the average standard of living back down. If income is redistributed from the rich to the poor, one predictable effect is that the rich live less well. Another is that the poor increase in number until rising misery returns the population growth rate to zero. This rather unpleasant vision is the standard Malthusian one.

Unfortunately, in the long run, without population control, attempts to eliminate poverty merely increase the population and reintroduce poverty. The obvious solution is to replace misery as a device for controlling population growth with some other program for limiting the birth rate and stabilizing population. While there is certainly something very intrusive about the government acting to limit birth
s, it seems preferable to allowing population growth to be limited by poverty.

If there is to be some family size limitation, at least among certain families, perhaps we should be asking what criteria should be used to decide who should have children, and who should be prevented or discouraged from having children?

This may be a good point to refer to the evidence that many humans traits are strongly influenced by genes (Rowe 1994; Lynn 1996; Miller, 1997a). This evidence come from the science of behavior genetics. The first testable predication of a theory that variability in a trait is genetically influenced is that the trait will run in families. However, traits can also run in families because they are environmentally influenced, and each generation creates for their children an environment similar to the one they themselves were raised in. Thus, it is necessary to look for situations where environmental theories and genetic theories make different predictions.

One such situation is in adoptions, where the environment is created by the family of adoption, and the genes come from the biological parents. If there is no genetic influence, there will be zero correlation between the children's traits and those of the biological parents. To the extent the environment of rearing is influential, the adoptee's traits will be correlated with the family of rearing, while to the extent that genes are influential (or prenatal conditions) it will be correlated with the family of genetic origin.

Another method is twin studies. Here findings that monozygotic twins are more alike than dizygotic twins provides evidence of genetic effects. This is an example of a more general effect, in which, by examining the extent to which those who differ in genetic relationships resemble reach other, one can model the role of genetic factors. Especially impressive are the studies of separated twins that were raised apart. These frequently grow up to be quite similar in personality and intelligence (Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990; Pederson, Plomin, McClearn, & Friberg, 1988).

Due to space limitations, this is not the place to present all the evidence for the importance of genetic factors in intelligence and personality. However, there is strong evidence that most traits are genetically influenced (see for instance Rowe 1994 for summary evidence on the large number of traits for which genetic influences have been shown). Even what appear to be social attitudes have been shown to be affected by genes (Eaves, Eysenck, & Martin, 1989).

In general, the evidence for the role of genes in so many factors raises the possibility of controlling who bears children to influence the traits found in succeeding generations. This makes it useful to begin to discuss how eugenic policies might be carried out

In the short run, population growth can be restrained by encouraging smaller families by various voluntary means. By lecturing about the dangers of population growth and the environmental problems of a large population, some people may be persuaded to choose smaller families. However, these are likely to be the most responsible people. With each generation, the fraction of such responsible people is likely to decline. There is evidence that altruism (Rushton, 1980) is affected by genes. A voluntary program selects against such genes. Eventually this method will fail.

Because women that have many opportunities for high prestige jobs (professors etc.) frequently take them and choose to have few children, a common proposal for reducing the birth rate is to increase women's access to such jobs (Hoffman, 1975). Rhetorically this makes it easy to be both feminist and concerned about population growth.

For instance, in America the number of children per women 35-44 (when women have virtually completed their child bearing) is 1.6 for women with 16 years or more of education (college graduates usually), while it is 2.6 for those with 0-11 years of education (usually non-high school graduates), with those with in-between levels having 1.9 children for some college, and 2.0 children for high school graduates (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). Presumably the college graduates delay the start of childbearing to complete their education (which may continue into graduate and professional school), and then frequently choose an interesting career over staying at home for child rearing. If these effects are caused by the education (rather than a common cause, such as a desire for a career causing the education), it would follow that providing more education for females would reduce population growth. If the whole population of the world had the US pattern of female education and birthrates, overpopulation would not be a threat.

Observations like the above lead many to argue that the solution (or at least a major part of it) for excessive population growth is to educate women, and to increase their opportunity to play high prestige roles in society. Women will then choose these roles over child bearing and rearing.

However, there are problems with this policy proposal (besides the obvious ones of whether the education is really causing the low birth rates, and how poor countries could afford to educate their women so well).

Unfortunately, the evidence is that much of what determines whether women will have access to high paying, high prestige jobs is genetic, notably the genes for intelligence (Jensen 1981; Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Seligman, 1992, Storfer, 1990). Educating women and encouraging them to take up jobs that reduce their childbearing will work for the first few generations, but it will gradually lower the intelligence level of the population.

Herrnstein & Murray (1994) show that the average IQ of female college graduates was 111, versus 81 for the women who did not finish high school. The others were in between (103 for those with some college, and 95 for high school graduates). If we try to control population growth by encouraging the more intelligent women to choose careers over childbearing, in the long run the average intelligence must decline. This occurs because of the high heritability for intelligence. Because the intelligent women usually marry intelligent men, discouraging reproduction by intelligent women also reduces reproduction by intelligent men. Thus, this apparently desirable method for controlling population growth, so consistent with modern feminism, lacks long run viability.

However, there are other problems with any voluntary method for controlling population growth. It is likely that the drives for fatherhood or motherhood run in families for either cultural or genetic reasons. Those with weaker drives to be parents will be more readily persuaded to forgo parenthood. However, efforts to persuade people to voluntarily forgo parenthood merely assure that in the next generation will come disproportionately from those with stronger drives for parenthood. Thus, a voluntary program will eventually eliminate those who are easily persuaded to forgo parenthood. Those left will, for either genetic or cultural reasons (including religious ones), be unwilling to forgo parenthood. This is similar to the argument made above for appealing to the citizen's altruism to limit population growth. After the altruistic have been persuaded to limit their reproduction, and to gradually eliminate themselves, who is left that can voluntarily be persuaded to limit their births?

It is also true that some ethnic groups have higher birth rates than other (most likely for cultural reasons). If these differences persist, the mathematics insure that eventually the nation's growth rate will equal the growth rate of its fastest growing ethnic components. To use an extreme example, Hutterites (a sect that does not believe in birth control) may be the fastest growing group in a nation. If other groups can be persuaded to restrict
their birth rates, given enough time the Hutterites will become any nation's dominant group. Then that nation's population growth rate will be that of the Hutterites.

Thus, eventually, population must stabilize and the alternatives are:

1. That this is done by restricting births by government coercion

2. This is done by poverty.

For the type of society that can result from poverty see Scheper-Hughes (1992) description of everyday life in Northeastern Brazil. She paints a disturbing picture in which most families live in poverty and infant mortality is very high, high enough so that parents become reconciled to losing children. Indeed, it appears as if they are subconsciously deciding to let some children die of malnutrition. Yet as bad as the situation described is, the population is still growing. The typical poor women still manages to more than reproduce herself. A even higher degree of misery would be required to limit population growth.

Besides limiting population growth rates, there is one other advantage to limiting family size. Right now the poorest families are the largest (Lynn 1996: Herrenstein & Murray, 1994). Mathematically, this implies that the percentage of the nation's children that are raised in poverty exceeds the percentage of the adults that are poor. In the US, child advocacy groups regularly point out the high fraction of the nation's children who are being raised in poverty. They consistently fail to point out how restricting the birth rates among the poor would help to solve this problem. The effect would be partially by lowering the percentage of children who are born into poor families. If this resulted in lowering family size among the poor, the low income families could spread their resources out more among their children.

Spreading the family's resources among fewer children would increase the per child amounts not only for economic resources such as money, but also of non-economic resources. It also permits (but does not guarantee) more parental time per child, and more supervision, which is usually believed to be good. For instance, it is know that children raised in large families more often grow up to be criminals, and in mainstream criminology this is attributed to such children receiving less parental supervision (Lynn, 1996)

If the government is to decide who is to have children, they may wish to decide on some rational criteria, so as to improve the gene pool or to accomplish other goals.

Admittedly, some might try to restrict population growth by an across the board restriction, thus apparently avoiding hard decisions about who should be allowed to reproduce. For instance, families might be somehow limited to two or three children (China now has a limit of one). However, for a stable population, two is too few, and three too many. In theory, one might alternate restriction of two with those of three for different generations (two children per family in several generations, and then a generation permitting three children per couple to rebuild the population). Likewise, if the number required for a stable population was 2.2, one might randomly assign certain families to the three child category, thus avoiding having to make choices on a rational basis. However, either of these procedures for avoiding making hard choices seems to forgo the advantages of selectivity for little reason.

If parental time for child rearing is very important, or if most adults want strongly to be parents, the goal might be families approximately equal in size. Any limits would then be to two or three children per family, and the selectivity would be limited to deciding on some basis which families would be allowed to have three children rather than two.

If the emphasis is more on insuring that children are born with the best possible genes, a greater degree of variability in family size might be considered desirable. Each family might be allowed a minimum of one child to give them the pleasures of parenthood, and possibly to provide society with whatever benefits may result from adults being parents (more conservative behavior among males for instance). The desired average of a little more than two children per family could then be achieved by having the selected parents have at least three children, and possibly more.

While different policies have implications for the percentages of the children that have occupied different birth orders, there is not now strong evidence that would justify preferring children of any particular birth order (Ernst & Angst, 1983). Clearly different strategies could change the percentage of middle children relative to first and last borns. Sulloway (1995, 1996) has presented evidence that first born are more conservative and later born more likely to be rebels, but it is not obvious which society should pick when it can choose.

Of course, if the goal is to provide an even more rapid genetic improvement while still retaining traditional family structures, those couples with the worse genetic endowment would be prevented from reproducing. The deficit would be made up for by much larger families among the couples with the better genes (however defined). This would require that many of these families have four or more children. Since there is no real evidence that large families are bad for children, this would seem to be an acceptable alternative.

Of course, if one is willing to explore unconventional family structures such as making more use of artificial impregnation, even where the wife has a husband who could father her children, or where the potential mother lacks a husband (as with single women or lesbian couples), there is scope for more rapidly spreading desirable genes. One might even consider cloning now that this has been shown to be possible in mammals (Specter, 1997).

Anything that slows the reproduction of those with genetic traits society does not want to perpetuate may be an eugenic policy. These aspects are not always discussed.

For instance, prison visits of wives for sexual purposes may encourage births by those carrying genes for criminality. Yet the discussions of this typically consist of the opponents saying that prison should be as unpleasant as practical, and that it is inconsistent with punishment to provide sexual access. On the other side, those in favor of conjugal visits typically argue they help to hold marriages together, prevent the spouse from being penalized, and perhaps help in managing the prisoners. Mention of any genetic effect seems to be missing.

It is sometimes proposed that rapists be castrated. This is generally proposed merely as punishment, but yet it should reduce the births of those with personality traits (possibly poor impulse control) that lead to rape and other crimes (for a discussion of the role of genes in rape see Ellis, 1989)..

Castration seems to work. Recidivism rates have been found to be 0 to 7.4% in a study of 2,055 European rapists (Bradford, 1990), which is far lower than the US recidivism rates, which have been reported to be as high as 40%. Given that castration is likely to be far cheaper than years of imprisonment, it might be used.

Perhaps even more effective in reducing rapes might be surgery that prevented erections by cutting relevant nerves. This would eliminate the reinforcing effects of fantasies accompanied by masturbation, probably reducing the motivation for rape and other sex crimes. This is purely a speculative proposal at this stage, but one that should be the subject of some discussion.

In principle, castration might be used for other violent crimes also. It has the attraction of being relatively low cost. If there is a substantial genetic basis for most crimes, and the evidence is that there is (Lynn, 1996), castration would reduce the number of offspring left by such criminals. If it is desirable to reduce the rate of population growth for other reas
ons, as was argued above, criminals would seem to be good ones to deprive of the benefits of fatherhood.

Of course, castration of criminals might deprive their wives or girl friends of parenthood. It is likely in many case they would become pregnant even without artificial insemination. However, with the availability of artificial insemination, they would be expected to frequently choose artificial insemination rather than remaining childless. The result would be replacing the sperm of a criminal with what could be a very high quality sperm. Obviously that would tend to reduce the frequency of the genes most closely related to criminal activity.

One side benefit of such a program would probably be selection against low intelligence. It is known that arrested criminals tend to have below average intelligence. For instance, Herrenstein & Murray (1994, p 248) found that 12% of the male whites in the very dull category were in a correctional facility when interviewed versus 3% for the whole sample.

There are a number of ways people might be induced to limit births that would not involved coercion (other than to pay the taxes to finance the programs). Most such programs would probably have an eugenic effect since those with lower incomes or shorter time horizons would probably find any given incentive program more attractive.

Payments for sterilization might be offered, say $5,000 or $10,000. These sums would be attractive to those who have a weak desire to leave descendants. Very likely such programs would select for other desirable traits such as a tendency to weight income in the distant future less than in the present. Banfield (1974) has argued that a greater desire for current pleasure (related to the economist's concept of time preference) lies behind many of the inner city problems. For instance, if one needs $20 for a date tonight the easiest way to obtain it is to snatch someone's purse. Admittedly, repeated purse snatching is likely to end in a jail sentence, but that is sometime in the distant future. At a high enough interest rate, stealing the purse becomes rational.

Likewise, drug taking brings immediate pleasure even if at the cost of future addiction. Sex brings immediate pleasure even if the cost is unwed motherhood, or for the father, financial responsibility for children. Watching TV is more pleasant than studying, but studying has long run returns in higher income. Maintaining real estate takes time, but over the long run it makes for a more comfortable home. Saving (and forgoing use of credit) reduces current consumption, but increases future consumption. Creating a small business often means putting in long hours and doing without many pleasures. However, eventually, the small business may succeed. One can imagine many such examples.

There is very little solid research on whether time preference has a genetic basis. It is known to vary with ethnic background. For instance, in Trinidad children of Indian descent (ancestors from India) are less willing to accept a small piece of candy now rather than a larger piece of candy in the future than those of African descent (Mischel & Metzer, 1962). However, since most personality traits are strongly affected by genes with a substantial heritability, it is very likely that the ability to defer gratification is a trait with a genetic component.

If a desire for immediate gratification plays a role in criminality, as it appears to (Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985), it is to be expected that restraining the reproduction of convicted criminals would also tend to restrict the reproduction of those with a short time preference.

It is very likely that many modern methods of birth control select for a desire for immediate gratification. Consider for instance the simple condom. Using this for birth control requires stopping the sequence of events (often seduction) that lead to impregnation to put a condom on. Those who have a strong desire for immediate gratification are much less likely to do this. The same argument applies to inserting a diaphragm, coitus interruptus, or using sponges. Even using birth control pills requires obtaining the pills in advance, and remembering to take them at the right time.

A significant fraction of births represent failures of birth control (Van Court, 1983). For the United States, the Kost & Forrest (1995) analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth reported that 36% of births were unplanned. For those with less than twelve years of education, 58% of the births were unplanned versus only 27% among college graduates. Besides the obvious dysgenetic effect on intelligence, these probably have a dysgenic effect in that the families that who have children through birth control failure are probably less willing to defer gratification, and have a lower ability to plan ahead. Also, it is very likely that inability to defer gratification goes with a lower intelligence. Incidentally, the high fraction of births that are unplanned suggests that improved methods of birth control that are easier may have a significant eugenic effect.

One other trait that may go with accidental pregnancies is drinking alcohol. Many people are inhibited about sex and loosen up with alcohol (or are plied with alcohol by their potential sex partners). Alcohol in general lowers inhibitions. These lower inhibitions are both towards having sex, and towards having unprotected sex. In the modern world, where most children born are raised to sexual maturity, the fact that birth control methods are readily available to most everyone to be used or not, may act as a selective agent for alcohol consumption. The reason is that people who are drunk, or merely under the influence of alcohol are less likely to use birth control, and are therefore more leave offspring with the same propensity for alcohol consumption. However, this desire for alcohol also goes along with alcoholism, and this makes a mate less desirable (and intoxication can make the sex act harder for males).

Boulding (1969) has proposed transferable licenses for child bearing, each couple to get 2.2 licenses. They could then be bought or sold. Those who valued children most would have the larger families (probably a good in itself). In practice, many poor people and those with short time horizons would sell their licenses for the money. This would have a desirable eugenic effect.

Barry (1969) has proposed payments for potential parents who have no more than two children, such payments to be proportional to income. He bases the proposal to make the payments proportional to income on a desire to have the upper and middle classes restrict their fertility as much as the lower classes. His rationale for trying to restrict fertility as much in the upper and middle classes is to maintain the opportunity for upward mobility for the poor. Interestingly, this paper, although appearing in a journal stating on the cover that is was formerly the Eugenics Quarterly, displays no awareness that restriction of fertility among the lower classes would increase the genetic quality of the population. However, his explicit rationale for trying to avoid disproportionate fertility restriction among the lower classes does point out a possible disadvantage to eugenics programs. If fertility is disproportionately restricted among the lower classes as a successful eugenics program would do, there is likely to be more social downward mobility, with more of the population feeling they were ranked lower than their parents (and they will be correct). If moving downwards in the social hierarchy makes people feel bad (and it does), this is a disadvantage to an eugenics program.

Any plan that offers large sums of cash for sterilization, or for restricting child bearing, would reduce the birth rates most among those with a strong desire for current consumption. Such large cash payments would be especially attractive to drug addicts who often need money to purchase drugs. There could
be expected to be effects on future rates of drug abuse from such an eugenics program.

If it were politically possible, one might even trade drugs for sterilization or implantation of a birth control device, or at least provide enough drugs so that there would not be withdrawal problems around the time of the sterilization.

Since crack, alcohol, (and probably other drugs) affect the fetus, there would be strong social savings if these addicted women could be prevented from having children. It could also slow down the spread of AIDS, which is frequently transmitted from mother to child. Notice that such benefits are environmental in nature.

An obvious idea is to tie the receipt of welfare to using a drug which prevents having additional children while on welfare, such as Norplant. Given the correlation of being on welfare with low intelligence, and probably with other undesirable genetic traits, such a proposal would improve the nation's genetic stock. Given the difficulty of knowing whether promises to use birth control are being observed, tying receipt of welfare to using most methods of birth control is probably infeasible. Penalizing mothers for having babies after they promised not to would either end up penalizing the children, or force the mothers into having abortions.

It is to be expected that any measure that reduces the pool of low IQ, uneducated individuals would reduce the competition for the jobs such people can do. Such a program should reduce the unemployment rate, and raise incomes among the low IQ part of the population.

The final outcome of such birth control would be to reduce inequalities by two mechanisms.

1 Reducing the number of those with traits leading to low income (low IQ, short time preference, etc.) in the society. This raises the weighted average skill level.

2. By raising the wages rates for unskilled labor. It is a standard prediction of economic models that reducing the supply raising the price. It follows that reducing the supply of low wage labor would raise the wage rates for such services.

Although the word eugenics is very unpopular among intellectuals, there may not be as much opposition among the ordinary voters.

One Texas legislator in an informal poll found 3,533 to 2,604 in favor of sterilization for welfare moms with 3 or more children. (Reilly, 1991, p.161). The Boston Globe found, in a call in telephone poll, that 49% supported sterilization of the mentally ill.

China has apparently adopted a sterilization law targeting mentally retarded parents in one province (Reilly, 1994, p. 164). While China is politically quite different from the United States, this still shows that such actions may be possible

Singapore has announced eugenic programs aimed at promoting births by the better educated (Chan, 1987), and in particular by graduate women. There was also announced a program to reward low income families under 30 with less than two children for being sterilized with US$4,000 as a down payment for a government low cost apartment.

Of course, there are arguments against eugenics programs. Government power over private citizen's lives is always subject to abuse. So history teaches. US state run programs seem to have had problems with some sterilizations that were not for good eugenic reasons (Reilly, 1991). Any government program is going to make numerous mistakes and possibly suffer from some corruption. Certainly it has not always been known which traits were genetically influenced, and there were some sterilizations done under the various laws that probably do not contribute to improving the genetic stock. For instance, there is a case of a woman who was the offspring of incest, but apparently otherwise unhandicapped, being sterilized.

Currently, we are far from having much knowledge of which genes influence particular traits, or from knowing all the traits that are subject to genetic influences. If we were given complete copies of the genetic sequences for two individuals we could not tell which one we preferred. That is true. However, such a high level of knowledge is not needed for a useful eugenics program.

It is generally known that many traits are genetically influenced (see above) and people generally agree on which direction is good. For instance:

1. High intelligence is good.

2. Self control is good.

3. Criminality and rape are bad.

4. Most diseases are bad.

The above provides a basis for deciding whose reproduction to encourage. At this point we could proceed with a start on programs, hoping to improve knowledge in the future.

One theoretical concern is that many traits may be influenced by pleitropic genes such that selec