Get rid of iodine deficiency. Amazingly, even moderate iodine deficiency causes IQ declines of 10-15 points if it's in a pregnant woman or an infant. It looks like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Ethiopia, Sudan, Guinea, Senegal and Sierra Leone all have moderate to severe deficiency.
It would be interesting to see a better rundown of the severity of the deficiency in each place so we could figure out how much collective IQ could go up with iodine supplementation. In India, 500 million (50% of the population) get too little iodine, 54 million have goiter (severe deficiency) and 2 million are cretins due to extreme deficiency.
Yet another failure of Indian capitalism to provide for the very basics in human needs in India, and one more reason I support the Maoist revolutionaries in that country.
Many other nations have mild deficiencies. I don't know what a mild deficiency does to your IQ, if anything. 16% of the world's population has goiters, which are apparently caused only by iodine deficiency. That's ridiculous. 1/6 of the world's population.
International Council for the Control of Iodine Deficiency website.
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