By the numbers, it would seem they are. US Jews have a median household income about 50% higher than US Christians, a net worth about 6x that of Chris

Contra Smith On Jewish Selective Immigration

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2021-06-14 23:00:05

By the numbers, it would seem they are. US Jews have a median household income about 50% higher than US Christians, a net worth about 6x that of Christians, and are about twice as likely as Christians to make more than $100K/year. They're about twice as likely as Christians to get college degrees, and about 15x more likely to win Nobel prizes. These numbers are of about the same magnitude as the gap between blacks and whites, so if you take those numbers seriously, you should probably take these ones seriously too.

But Noah wonders if this really needs an interesting explanation, or if it's just a series of boring things on top of each other. He gives five reasons why maybe Jews could do unusually well. I’m going to concentrate on selective immigration, then briefly touch on the others.

1. Selective immigration - Maybe only the smartest/richest/go-getter-est Jews made it to the US, which makes American Jews seem extra impressive. We know something like this happens for some groups of modern immigrants - for example, Indian-Americans are very successful, earning about twice as much as whites on average. But everyone knows that it's mostly Indian elites who emigrate, so this isn't too surprising. Might Jews be the same? Noah writes: