I can’t decide whether this is depressing or not:
Intelligence has nothing to do with wealth, according to a US study published Tuesday which found that people with below average smarts were just as wealthy as those with higher IQ scores.
“People don’t become rich because they are smart,” said Jay Zagorsky, research scientist at Ohio State University whose study appears in the Journal Intelligence.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics survey included 7,403 Americans who have been interviewed repeatedly since 1979. Based on 2004 answers, people who are now in their mid-40s showed no link between brain- and earning-power.
“Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth. And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty,” Zagorsky said.
The study confirmed previous research which has shown that smarter people tend to earn more money, but pointed out there is a difference between high pay and overall wealth.
“The average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top two percent of society (130) is currently between 6,000 and 18,500 dollars per year,” it said.
“But when it came to total wealth and the likelihood of financial difficulties, people of below average and average intelligence did just fine when compared to the super-intelligent.”
An irregular pattern of total wealth as well as financial distress levels — such as maxed out credit cards, bankruptcy and missing bill payments — emerged among the various degrees of intelligence, the study said.
The study measured intelligence based on scores from the US Armed Services Qualification Test, a general aptitude test used by the Department of Defense.
(Via Raw Story.)
Interesting, but without the details it’s very hard to comment on it. I know a number of people with extreme IQ’s whose minds are so out there they can’t find their way out of a paper bag; perhaps salary and ladder-based gains aren’t important enough to them. Also, the study appears to deal in cold numbers, not facts such as job satisfaction. If you’re truly happy in a lower-paying job, why sell your soul just to make a buck? Wasn’t Einstein a desk clerk at one point? Do the more intelligent give more to charity? Most major religions are supposed to eschew wealth (“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”); was philosophy taken into account? I know several PhD’s who work lowly desk jobs because they can’t stand the heaps of BS involved in academia, and I have a close friend with 4 higher degrees who’s in desperate debt from paying loans for those degrees. Personality is another uncounted factor: just because you have a higher IQ doesn’t mean you’d make good managerial material; it just means you might find insights and solutions other people can’t. I don’t know all the parameters of the study, but it seems rather pointless to me. In the end, even Bill Gate’s money can’t buy true intelligence or happiness. And I currently wouldn’t believe anything based on an IQ test or a test of financial solvency run by the DOD.