Richwine received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and political science from American University, graduating in 2004. He then studied at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 2009 in public policy, with a dissertation entitled "IQ and Immigration Policy". His dissertation stated that illegal Hispanic immigrants to America had lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites, and noted that this disparity persisted for several generations. The dissertation committee was composed of economist Richard Zeckhauser, economist George Borjas, and Christopher Jencks, the social scientist and editor of The American Prospect. Richwine subsequently wrote an article for Politico defending his dissertation and arguing that the statements it contained about ethnic differences in IQ were "scientifically unremarkable".
Career
Prior to working at Heritage, Richwine worked briefly at the American Enterprise Institute; while there, he wrote a book review for The American Conservative criticizing Richard E. Nisbett's book Intelligence and How to Get It. In 2010, he wrote two pieces about immigration and crime for the online magazineAlternativeRight.com in response to a Ron Unz essay covering the same topic in The American Conservative. After a study co-authored by Richwine regarding the costs of illegal immigration was released by the Heritage Foundation, former Washington Post reporter Dylan Matthews found the dissertation and wrote a blog post about it on May 8, 2013. Richwine argued that Hispanics and blacks are intellectually inferior to whites and have trouble assimilating because of a supposed genetic predisposition to lower IQ. Richwine resigned from the Foundation on May 10, 2013. As of 2017, Richwine had contributed on occasion to National Review. He continued his controversial research, and published an article in the American Affairs journal entitled "Low-Skill Immigration: A Case for Restriction". Richwine joined the Heritage Foundation in 2009 after he received his PhD in public policy from Harvard. Titled "IQ and Immigration Policy", he writes on this work:
"No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. "the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ, but the extent of its impact is hard to determine. "The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market."
A later work for the Heritage Foundation released in 2013, of which Richwine is co-author with Robert Rector, claims that the immigration reform bill then being weighed in the U.S. Senate would cost the government $5.3 trillion. As a criticism, on May 6, 2013, Dylan Matthews wrote for The Washington Post: "The study represents the most notable attack on the reform effort to date from a conservative group... So does the Heritage estimate hold up? Not really. They make a lot of curious methodological choices that cumulatively throw the study into question. It's likely that immigrants would pay a lot more in taxes, and need a lot less in benefits, than Heritage assumes, and that other benefits would outweigh what costs remain."
