I don't think that this claim is credible. It comes from Lynn & Becker, who also have Nepal's average IQ at 43,[1] which is in the range where someone with that IQ would be considered mentally disabled, with limited capacity for independent life. That cannot be reconciled with the employment rate in Nepal. And according to Lynn & Becker, the average person from Nepal, Liberia and Sierra Leone has an IQ that puts them in that category.
1. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-i...
That's exactly what Lynn did: he has "good" IQ data generated for-purpose by the research communities in developed countries, and just uses IQ data from, essentially, mental health institutions elsewhere. He presents these data sets as apples-apples equivalent.
It gets worse: for what should be obvious reasons, there are lots of countries where it isn't easy to get any such data. Lynn doesn't try; instead, his team takes data from neighboring countries and extrapolates.
More precisely, somewhere in the range 97-105, depending on the study.
> He’s implying the rest of the world are lower IQ.
He couldn't be implying that. The rest of the world would necessarily average to 100 for the average of the whole world to be 100, when North America and Europe averages 100.
It happens that the rest of the world varies wildly.
A country like United Arab Emirates has an average IQ of around 97, so similar.
And a country like Morocco has an average IQ of around 67. Average!
The average of middle eastern countries is around 85.
Several Asian countries pull up the average significantly.
China and South Korea are at around 104-107, depending on the study.