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I think it refers to downstream effects of intelligence and aptitudes. For example if I'm really smart, and I make a lot of money and leave my children a generous inheritance, their privilege is a residue of my gifted aptitude.

Pareto made a distinction between 'residues' (psychological bases underlying social action) and 'derivations' (rationalizations by members of society as justifications of those actions). It might be used in that sense here.

The little things which are left, but here's a throwback to "Cauchy's residue theorem"[0] to make this more fun.

You can also think of power spectrum analysis, not all frequencies have the same "power".

Though in a time-frequency representation, not all frequencies have the same energy at every moment.

- [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residue_theorem

It's not just you. I'm not familiar with this usage of the term.

I sort of read that as 'residuals' which is still used to describe some types of benefits.