Every few years, a familiar claim resurfaces: that hotter countries are poorer because heat somehow lowers intelligence. These arguments, often dressed up in pseudo-scientific charts linking temperature and IQ, are not just analytically lazy — they are strategically misleading. They distract from the real issue facing the Middle East and North Africa: not intelligence, but human capital retention.

MENA is one of the hottest regions on earth. That is a physical reality. But heat alone does not doom societies to stagnation. If it did, Singapore, Houston, or the Gulf states would not function as global hubs. The decisive variable is not temperature; it is whether institutions, cities, and labor markets are designed to retain and compound talent under climatic stress. The World Bank’s Human Capital Index (HCI) provides a useful lens: it measures how well countries translate health, education, and skills into productivity. Across MENA, HCI scores reveal a mixed picture — high in the Gulf, lower in North Africa and parts of the Levant — highlighting gaps not in intelligence, but in the environment that allows skills to be realized.

The obsession with IQ misses this entirely.

Heat Is a Stressor, Not a Verdict

Extreme heat can affect short-term cognitive performance — concentration dips, productivity falls, learning suffers in poorly cooled classrooms. It also has more subtle long-term effects: in-utero and early-childhood exposure can influence birth outcomes, growth, and later educational attainment. These channels are partially captured in the Human Capital Index: countries with lower HCI scores tend to underinvest in early-life health, nutrition, and education, amplifying heat’s indirect effects. But where policy buffers exist, such as air-conditioned schools, adequate healthcare, and prenatal care, heat’s impact diminishes. Temperature does not mechanically lower intelligence; it raises the cost of governing well.

This distinction matters for MENA. The region produces large numbers of engineers, doctors, financiers, and scientists. Its diasporas populate universities, hospitals, and boardrooms across Europe, North America, and Australasia. If intelligence were the binding constraint, this pattern would be impossible. The constraint is not ability. It is retention.

Human Capital Retention: The Real Variable

Human capital retention — the ability to keep skilled people productive at home — is where heat becomes politically and economically explosive. Extreme temperatures reduce urban livability, raise health risks, and amplify dissatisfaction when paired with weak institutions. For high-skilled workers, this becomes a migration calculus. When career progression, academic freedom, research funding, or regulatory predictability are uncertain,........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)