IQ has little effect on total wealth
While it is true that people with higher IQs tend to have higher incomes, it does not mean that they have a greater net worth, found a new study by Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research. Based on data gathered from 7,403 American participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, who are now in their mid-40s and have been interviewed repeatedly since 1979, the study found that a person’s income increases $202-616 with each IQ point, something we’ve known for a while. But, Zagorsky went a step further to analyze the likelihood of participants falling into financial difficulties. Strangely, he got mixed results. Take the percentage of people who maxed out their credit cards: it starts rising from 7.7% of people with IQ less than 75 until it peaks at 12.1% for IQ 90, then it starts falling irregularly to 5.4% for IQ 115, only to start rising again. Similar irregularities can be found regarding participants claiming bankruptcy or missing bill payments. Even with people of IQ 125 and above, 6% have maxed out their credit cards and 11% miss payments from time to time. So, there is no direct relationship between intelligence and total wealth, college campuses can testify to that. "Professors tend to be very smart people. But if you look at university parking lots, you don’t see a lot of Rolls Royces, Porsches or other very expensive cars. Instead you see a lot of old, low-value vehicles" said Zagorsky, who is currently finishing a new study to account for how people with higher incomes can have the same total wealth as those with low-medium. To hazard a guess, it probably has to do with them spending more on today instead of worrying about tomorrow, while also supporting other people in their lives.