Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth is a 1996 book by Claude S. Fischer, Michael Hout, Martín Sánchez Jankowski, Samuel R. Lucas, Ann Swidler, and Kim Voss.

The book is a reply to The Bell Curve (1994) by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein and attempts to show that the arguments in The Bell Curve are flawed, that the data used by Murray and Herrnstein do not support their conclusion and that alternative explanations (particularly the effects of social inequality) better explain differences in IQ scores than genetic explanations.

The book's particular focus is the book The Bell Curve, but to some extent this focus is to illustrate a doctrine that the authors attempt to refute: At its base is a philosophy ages old: Human misery is natural and beyond human re-demption; inequality is fated; and people deserve, by virtue of their native talents, the positions they have in society.

In later chapters the book examines the supposed lower intelligence of a variety of ethnic groups in different societies and time periods.

The American case fits the global pattern; it is not genes but caste positions that explain the apparent differences in cognitive performance.Notable examples of such groups include Koreans in Japan compared with Koreans in the United States, and the supposed change in perception of Jews in the United States from being regarded as "dull" in the early twentieth century to being regarded as part of a "cognitive elite" now.