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Damn lies and statistics, though. Being poor does not cause lower IQ, nor does lower IQ cause you to be poor. However, you'll find a lot of lower IQ people at p

Damn lies and statistics, though. Being poor does not cause lower IQ, nor does lower IQ cause you to be poor. However, you'll find a lot of lower IQ people at poverty level. You can't guarantee that any college candidate that is poor is not going to excel, so poverty, sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, should have absolutely nothing to do with acceptance into any organization, assuming that everything else is equal, which it isn't. Unfortunately clothing, shared experience and knowledge, language, etc. significantly influence testing and decisions.

rtpg 13y ago
Pretty sure growing up in poverty can negatively influence access to mentally stimulating things. Not saying that the number on the bank account directly influences IQ, but tackling poverty would probably have ripples in the school system too.
- bittired 13y ago
  This is going in a bad direction for sure now, but here is this thing: Some people, regardless of race, have lower intellectual capacity. That is what IQ tests try to measure, but fail to do completely because a lot is still based on education and experience that is difficult to factor out of the tests. A greater number of those people that have less intellectual capacity are not going to be as financially successful. Unless you just make them. And that "making" them is as temporary as the funds that keep going to them. That is NOT to say that we should not feed the poor and hungry. We should! And, we should try to educate them more, because they need more help. However, that is charity. People deserve love, food, and shelter. But, we are not able to "bring up" people to a level that cannot be sustained because they don't have the intellectual capacity. That is why welfare fails and is taken advantage of. Unless you have some sort of medicine or medical treatment that can make people with less intellectual capacity have greater intellectual capacity to even everyone out, then it should be considered charity to help the poor- not some sort of way to make everyone smarter.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    I get your point, I just don't think that "intellectual capacity" is really the limiting factor here. Education is a place where we really can make the pie bigger for everyone I think. And economics isn't zero-sum, we can at least try to make sure people can have 3 meals a day. Also, I'm not completely convinced of the amount of importance of intellect by birth. But that's more of an opinion I hold, I have no evidence to back it up.
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    Except that intellectual capacity is evidently not the main factor in determining the poverty level of people; it's certainly among one of the variables, but the fact that poor people are better off in some systems and countries rather than others and social mobility also varies substantially, it means that there's a ton of things that can work as government policy to improve the situation.
  - mkessy 13y ago
    What are you even talking about right now? The facts are: poverty makes it difficult for children to get access to stimulating environments, diversity of experience, non-stressful living conditions, and good academics. All these factors combined result in lower intelligence as a whole. That is very well cited in the papers, of which plenty have been linked and I suggest you look at them. So it follows that programs that attempt to provide and foster conditions that allow for an intelligent child to grow are beneficial. This can take many forms, educating poor mothers, better funding for schools, education about nutrition and stimulation, money for basic living necessities, etc. I just find it strange that for all your posts you haven't cited a single article that supports your claims. It seems to be your own logical surmising.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  Can't agree more with your first sentence and it's very depressing. Relatives purchased tickets for a show for me and my son to go to featuring fighting robots. He was extremely stimulated by it, not surprisingly, and I so want to capture that enthusiasm towards some engineering (make a robot). Without the wealthier relatives that stimulation wouldn't have been there. Without wealthier parents he's not going to (in short term at least) have access to resources to develop towards the potential educational outcomes from that experience. Taking a world view we must be in the top reaches of wealth too I'd imagine. Sad.
6d0debc071 13y ago
> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?
- bittired 13y ago
  Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!
  - jre 13y ago
    I think if you take the babies of the smartest X% people in the world and raise them in poverty then yes, their average IQ will be lower than if they were raised in a middle class household. Poverty means you have to skip meals, you can't afford books, you go to a school were there aren't enough teachers and so on... Those are all things that have an influence the intellectual development of a person.
    - bittired 13y ago
      You are confusing intelligence with intellectual capacity (IQ). IQ is the ability for a child to do exemplary things with his/her mind. Intelligence is building upon that. Being poor does not make you have lower IQ, nor does it make you less intelligent. A large number of the poor have come up from the depths and are very intelligent people.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        "An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess intelligence." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
arkades 13y ago
Attending college increases pre-college IQ scores a mean of just under 20 points (I don't recall the precise number from the study now, I remember it was between 15 and 20). That's not "smarter people get into college" - that's before-and-after on the same subjects. Growing up wealthy entails a lot more advantages than four years of courses, at that.
- rlanday 13y ago
  I would like to see that study if you can find it. IQ is generally believed to become more genetic (that is, environmental effects start to wear off) as people get older.
  - arkades 13y ago
    Sorry, I hit up Google Scholar trying to find it but had no luck. It's not my field of expertise, so I don't know the proper jargon to throw in to get the right search results.
Symmetry 13y ago
No, there's actually a good amount of evidence that poverty does in fact cause low IQs. For instance the divergence between the IQs of East Germans and West Germans during the partition, and the way they converged again after the Cold War. It is true that people with low IQs will tend to become poorer (though conscientiousness is often a bigger factor), but reversion to the mean should limit the impact of that in the children of poor people. EDIT: Here's a rather in depth article on the topic: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-... There's tons of evidence that at a population level wealth is the main driver of IQ differences, though genetics does play a large role at the individual level.
- qznc 13y ago
  Be careful about causality and correlation. Poverty probably does not "cause" low-IQ, but poverty is a good indicator for low-IQ due to correlation.
  - Symmetry 13y ago
    Correlation between A and B does not imply causation from A to B, but it does imply causation there is some causation somewhere, from A to B or B to A or something more complicated. In those cases we have to step down a level and look at the particular mechanisms. We can see some very good mechanisms for how a low IQ might cause poverty in most cases, but the specific reason I mentioned the East/West Germany situation is that it precludes any of the normal ways that people can sort themselves into poverty - it wasn't as if there was any huge migration in Germany that made all the smarter people end up on the west side of the divide. Can you provide a causal mechanism other than poverty->low IQ that could explain that? Or how about all the immigrants from rural Ireland that had significantly lower IQs than the residents of the cities they immigrated into, but whose children and descendants had substantially the same IQs as other residents of those cities? There's really a mountain of evidence that the causality here runs both ways.
    - qznc 13y ago
      Personally, I believe (!) in a causal chain like this: Poor people dream smaller (hopelessness,knowledge) -> less ambition (in school, career, wealth) -> less motivation (e.g. in IQ tests) -> envy -> aggression against wealthy people Also what does "poverty" mean here? "Lack of basic resources", then practically nobody is poor in Germany due to our welfare system. Statistics use "less than 60% of average income" or something like that. Then we will never eliminate poverty, anyways. To "solve" poverty I believe the big question is how to inspire people that it is possible to improve their situation? How to provide hope to poor people? In Germany I think it is intellectually realistic that anybody can improve, but people do not believe it. Essentially, (in the wealthy western world) poverty is not a technical problem, but rather an emotional one. I do not care about IQ much. I do not know my own IQ. Since I am currently pursuing a PhD I am probably above average, but who really cares? Studies show that IQ predicts academic success, so it means something for high-education jobs. For creative tasks it's useless. Effectively, the IQ of a child only provides a hint about future career choices, but not about success or wealth.
rayiner 13y ago
So the kids in the study were selected because their parents were poor, and the average IQ of the kids in the study was around 80. That certainly signals a correlation, and since these are kids and don't have agency over their economic situation, it suggests a direction of causation too.
- bittired 13y ago
  Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    It depends on how you ascribe causation to hereditary factors. Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? I don't think so, because a 4 year old has no agency over his economic circumstances.
    - bittired 13y ago
      I actually don't believe at a micro-level that causation comes into play at all. I was responding to the statement that at a macro-level there is probability of causation, and it is more rational that poverty is caused by stupidity than poverty causes stupidity. The latter is nonsense.
    - btilly 13y ago
      Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? No. But it does make sense to say that a 4 year old is both poor and has a low IQ because his parents do. And this applies whether you believe that his low IQ is due to heredity or a poor environment caused by his parents.
  - JshWright 13y ago
    How could it not have an impact on intellectual capacity? Good nutrition, stimulation, and education are all important during development. This things are all much easier to access when you have more money.
monkeyspaw 13y ago
There are also issues with using IQ as a proxy for... anything. Especially when we're talking about topics with strong racial components.

rtpg 13y ago

Pretty sure growing up in poverty can negatively influence access to mentally stimulating things. Not saying that the number on the bank account directly influences IQ, but tackling poverty would probably have ripples in the school system too.

bittired 13y ago
This is going in a bad direction for sure now, but here is this thing: Some people, regardless of race, have lower intellectual capacity. That is what IQ tests try to measure, but fail to do completely because a lot is still based on education and experience that is difficult to factor out of the tests. A greater number of those people that have less intellectual capacity are not going to be as financially successful. Unless you just make them. And that "making" them is as temporary as the funds that keep going to them. That is NOT to say that we should not feed the poor and hungry. We should! And, we should try to educate them more, because they need more help. However, that is charity. People deserve love, food, and shelter. But, we are not able to "bring up" people to a level that cannot be sustained because they don't have the intellectual capacity. That is why welfare fails and is taken advantage of. Unless you have some sort of medicine or medical treatment that can make people with less intellectual capacity have greater intellectual capacity to even everyone out, then it should be considered charity to help the poor- not some sort of way to make everyone smarter.
- rtpg 13y ago
  I get your point, I just don't think that "intellectual capacity" is really the limiting factor here. Education is a place where we really can make the pie bigger for everyone I think. And economics isn't zero-sum, we can at least try to make sure people can have 3 meals a day. Also, I'm not completely convinced of the amount of importance of intellect by birth. But that's more of an opinion I hold, I have no evidence to back it up.
- Daishiman 13y ago
  Except that intellectual capacity is evidently not the main factor in determining the poverty level of people; it's certainly among one of the variables, but the fact that poor people are better off in some systems and countries rather than others and social mobility also varies substantially, it means that there's a ton of things that can work as government policy to improve the situation.
- mkessy 13y ago
  What are you even talking about right now? The facts are: poverty makes it difficult for children to get access to stimulating environments, diversity of experience, non-stressful living conditions, and good academics. All these factors combined result in lower intelligence as a whole. That is very well cited in the papers, of which plenty have been linked and I suggest you look at them. So it follows that programs that attempt to provide and foster conditions that allow for an intelligent child to grow are beneficial. This can take many forms, educating poor mothers, better funding for schools, education about nutrition and stimulation, money for basic living necessities, etc. I just find it strange that for all your posts you haven't cited a single article that supports your claims. It seems to be your own logical surmising.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
Can't agree more with your first sentence and it's very depressing. Relatives purchased tickets for a show for me and my son to go to featuring fighting robots. He was extremely stimulated by it, not surprisingly, and I so want to capture that enthusiasm towards some engineering (make a robot). Without the wealthier relatives that stimulation wouldn't have been there. Without wealthier parents he's not going to (in short term at least) have access to resources to develop towards the potential educational outcomes from that experience. Taking a world view we must be in the top reaches of wealth too I'd imagine. Sad.

6d0debc071 13y ago

> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?

bittired 13y ago
Here is the logic: 1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world. 2. Take all of their money away. 3. Give it to the other 50%. Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ? DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!
- jre 13y ago
  I think if you take the babies of the smartest X% people in the world and raise them in poverty then yes, their average IQ will be lower than if they were raised in a middle class household. Poverty means you have to skip meals, you can't afford books, you go to a school were there aren't enough teachers and so on... Those are all things that have an influence the intellectual development of a person.
  - bittired 13y ago
    You are confusing intelligence with intellectual capacity (IQ). IQ is the ability for a child to do exemplary things with his/her mind. Intelligence is building upon that. Being poor does not make you have lower IQ, nor does it make you less intelligent. A large number of the poor have come up from the depths and are very intelligent people.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      "An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several standardized tests designed to assess intelligence." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

arkades 13y ago

Attending college increases pre-college IQ scores a mean of just under 20 points (I don't recall the precise number from the study now, I remember it was between 15 and 20). That's not "smarter people get into college" - that's before-and-after on the same subjects. Growing up wealthy entails a lot more advantages than four years of courses, at that.

rlanday 13y ago
I would like to see that study if you can find it. IQ is generally believed to become more genetic (that is, environmental effects start to wear off) as people get older.
- arkades 13y ago
  Sorry, I hit up Google Scholar trying to find it but had no luck. It's not my field of expertise, so I don't know the proper jargon to throw in to get the right search results.

Symmetry 13y ago

No, there's actually a good amount of evidence that poverty does in fact cause low IQs. For instance the divergence between the IQs of East Germans and West Germans during the partition, and the way they converged again after the Cold War. It is true that people with low IQs will tend to become poorer (though conscientiousness is often a bigger factor), but reversion to the mean should limit the impact of that in the children of poor people. EDIT: Here's a rather in depth article on the topic: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-wealth/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-... There's tons of evidence that at a population level wealth is the main driver of IQ differences, though genetics does play a large role at the individual level.

qznc 13y ago
Be careful about causality and correlation. Poverty probably does not "cause" low-IQ, but poverty is a good indicator for low-IQ due to correlation.
- Symmetry 13y ago
  Correlation between A and B does not imply causation from A to B, but it does imply causation there is some causation somewhere, from A to B or B to A or something more complicated. In those cases we have to step down a level and look at the particular mechanisms. We can see some very good mechanisms for how a low IQ might cause poverty in most cases, but the specific reason I mentioned the East/West Germany situation is that it precludes any of the normal ways that people can sort themselves into poverty - it wasn't as if there was any huge migration in Germany that made all the smarter people end up on the west side of the divide. Can you provide a causal mechanism other than poverty->low IQ that could explain that? Or how about all the immigrants from rural Ireland that had significantly lower IQs than the residents of the cities they immigrated into, but whose children and descendants had substantially the same IQs as other residents of those cities? There's really a mountain of evidence that the causality here runs both ways.
  - qznc 13y ago
    Personally, I believe (!) in a causal chain like this: Poor people dream smaller (hopelessness,knowledge) -> less ambition (in school, career, wealth) -> less motivation (e.g. in IQ tests) -> envy -> aggression against wealthy people Also what does "poverty" mean here? "Lack of basic resources", then practically nobody is poor in Germany due to our welfare system. Statistics use "less than 60% of average income" or something like that. Then we will never eliminate poverty, anyways. To "solve" poverty I believe the big question is how to inspire people that it is possible to improve their situation? How to provide hope to poor people? In Germany I think it is intellectually realistic that anybody can improve, but people do not believe it. Essentially, (in the wealthy western world) poverty is not a technical problem, but rather an emotional one. I do not care about IQ much. I do not know my own IQ. Since I am currently pursuing a PhD I am probably above average, but who really cares? Studies show that IQ predicts academic success, so it means something for high-education jobs. For creative tasks it's useless. Effectively, the IQ of a child only provides a hint about future career choices, but not about success or wealth.

rayiner 13y ago

So the kids in the study were selected because their parents were poor, and the average IQ of the kids in the study was around 80. That certainly signals a correlation, and since these are kids and don't have agency over their economic situation, it suggests a direction of causation too.

bittired 13y ago
Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.
- rayiner 13y ago
  It depends on how you ascribe causation to hereditary factors. Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? I don't think so, because a 4 year old has no agency over his economic circumstances.
  - bittired 13y ago
    I actually don't believe at a micro-level that causation comes into play at all. I was responding to the statement that at a macro-level there is probability of causation, and it is more rational that poverty is caused by stupidity than poverty causes stupidity. The latter is nonsense.
  - btilly 13y ago
    Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? No. But it does make sense to say that a 4 year old is both poor and has a low IQ because his parents do. And this applies whether you believe that his low IQ is due to heredity or a poor environment caused by his parents.
- JshWright 13y ago
  How could it not have an impact on intellectual capacity? Good nutrition, stimulation, and education are all important during development. This things are all much easier to access when you have more money.

monkeyspaw 13y ago

There are also issues with using IQ as a proxy for... anything. Especially when we're talking about topics with strong racial components.