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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

You seem to have some weird theory that wealth is somehow correlated with genetics - a theory that you cannot support with any evidence, but continue to reintroduce.

That's a weird theory? I think it follows quite naturally from:

1. Wealth is correlated with intelligence, and

2. Intelligence is at least partly inherited.

These both seem like they would be fairly obvious and noncontroversial, and I'm sure could be backed up with a few minutes googling. Which one would you like to take issue with?

PS. It's possible your misconception comes from thinking that "wealth is correlated with intelligence" allows us to make statements about specific cases -- like that rich person A is necessarily more intelligent than poor person B, or that the lower average wealth of group C than group D implies that group C is of lower average intelligence. Of course it means nothing of the sort.

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On #1, income is correlated with intelligence, but from the studies I can find, wealth is much more poorly correlated, if at all: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2007.02.003

From that paper's conclusion:

The results confirm other researchers' findings that IQ test scores and income are related. Depending on the method of analysis used and specific factors held constant, each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year. This means the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2% of society (130) is currently between $6000 and $18,500 per year. While income and IQ test scores are related, results do not suggest a link between IQ scores and wealth. Regression results range from a negative to a small positive relationship depending on the specific analysis done. Moreover, since most of the statistical results are not distinguishable from zero, this suggests IQ test scores and net worth are not connected.

What exactly does cause the concentration of wealth is an interesting question, but it appears to be more complex than simply making more income, and unlike income doesn't appear to be as strongly associated with intelligence (if associated at all).

yeah, but the less rich of the intelligent have better, safer and more widely respected jobs (I have met door to door salesmen that make more than members of parliament). They had opportunities to chose other more lucrative careers, but they didn't.

What the author thinks about his study:

While those with above-average IQs were three times more likely to have a high income as those with below-average IQs, they were only 1.2 times more likely to have a high net worth. "Simply put, there are few individuals with below-average IQ scores who have high income, but there are relatively large numbers (of those with below-average IQs) who are wealthy," he wrote.

"I was expecting that smarter people would have greater wealth," Zagorsky said. "And you kind of expect people with higher IQ to make fewer mistakes. . . . I thought, 'Wow, I must have made a mistake.' "

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBu...

As people here are fond of pointing out: correlation does not imply causation. One can easily make a plausible case that the reason people from wealthy backgrounds score higher on measures of intelligence is because, to the extent intelligence really is inherited, attempts to quantify it are still sensitive to things like quality of education and intellectual stimulation throughout life, both of which strongly correlate with wealth.

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