In the “NCLB, where to next?” thread, it was broadly hinted that poverty perpetuates a lack of intelligence, and hence, lower test scores. I wanted to open a discussion more specifically on that topic, to ask if perhaps people are in poverty because they aren’t as intelligent in the first place? I’m not trying to open a race conversation; I’ve noticed that poverty tends to cut across all racial lines, whereas it seems a greater percentage of people of lower intelligence are in poverty rather than affluence. With that in mind, let’s try to keep race out of this dicussion, please. I do concede that greater income can often produce greater opportunities, but is it possible that the people who are more affluent (middle-class and up) have greater percentages as a whole of persons who are more intelligent, than not? Is poverty perpetuated because the people living there are more likely to make less-intelligent decisions in their lives?
What say you?
That most likely you are confusing intelligence with education.
-XT
I tend to think poverty stems largely from the consequences of bad decisions (inherited or otherwise), social and cultural inertia, and fairly rigid class structure. Intelligence is fairly low on the list of things that affect success IMO.
xtisme, Nope - I’m being very clear here. Wealth does facilitate education. I’m not disputing that. I’m asking, is it possible that some (maybe many) people who start out in poverty, and never get out of it, are there because they lack the basic intelligence to make the decisions that would allow them to achieve more?
Sure it is. Just like lots of middle-class people aren’t smart enough to get rich. Really, we humans are a bunch of dumbasses, or we’d all be millionaires.
Well, I’m hoping we can have an honest discussion about the effects of intelligence on poverty and affluence. I’m not necessarily saying that you have to be a genius to get rich, or that you have to be stoooopid to be poor, but I’m curious as to how much of an impact intelligence has. It is true that some folks are “lucky” enough to be born into wealth, but it’s also true statistically that 80% of millionaires are first-generation millionaires, which means they made the money themselves. (I wish I had a cite for that, but I’ve read it in several places…I’ll try to dig that up later, since I’m at work and shouldn’t be typing on the SDMB anyway 
)
Let’s not forget that even if lack of intelligence leads to poverty, NCLB is testing the children of those with this hypothetical problem, and these children might be plenty intelligent inherently, but might get lower test scores due to poor nutrition or lack of exposure to books and cultural enrichment. Similarly, the not so bright child or a rich and intelligent parent might score better due to extra tutoring.
Googling, I came upon this stub of a story:
You’ll have to try real hard, I’ve failed utterly to find a reliable cite for that particular statistic. (That, by the way, would make it’s “truth” a wee bit questionable.)
Also, “millionnaire” ain’t what it used to be, and “first generation millionnaire” doesn’t necessarily mean “I was born in a tin-roofed shack and made my fortune single-handedly”. For many people, they may technically hold a million dollars worth of assets, but they just did a little better than their parents, who helped them out along the way.
Some? To be sure…there are some folks who are born wealthy who have the same lack. Them’s the breaks. But most people who are born poor and who are never able to improve their lot probably don’t do so due to lack of native intelligence. There will be any number of other reasons, such as lack of opportunity, lack of motivation, poor choices made, bad luck or myriad other similar reasons.
If you are talking about standardized tests and trying to use that as a basis for proving intelligence, consider: If you took someone who was an absolute genius but never educated them, how well would they do on such a test? If they couldn’t read or couldn’t do math, regardless of how intelligent they are they are going to do poorly. Now, take someone of simply average intelligence who has been reading from an early age and been taught math, reading and science. They are probably going to do better on a standardized test, right? Who is smarter? Who is more intelligent?
-XT
I’m no sociologist, but I bet there’s a certain set of poor folks who just don’t have the mental capacity to do much more than hammer nails and wash cars, and who as a result, won’t really ever be “successful” in the way that most people define it.
There’s probably a much larger set of poor people who are no dumber or smarter than the rest of the population who suffer from the “consequences of bad decisions (inherited or otherwise), social and cultural inertia, and fairly rigid class structure” mentioned earlier, and who are therefore poor out of societal circumstance and bad luck rather than a biological reason.
There’s also probably the same thing going on among the rich as well- some proportion is probably due to intelligence, but a larger number are due to societal circumstance and good luck rather than intelligence.
Personally, I think luck has a much larger role in all that than most people are willing to admit. Take two people, functionally identical, but one with a last name starting with A, and another with Z. Success could come down to something as arbitrary and lucky as being assigned to a particular teacher/prof/work group/dorm/etc… in elementary school, college or elsewhere based on alphabetical order.
Yes, we have a real cultural bias against admitting that luck is important. Genetics, True Grit and God’s Favor are all much more popular explanations for why someone prospers than “he just got lucky”.
Of course you can be stupid and get rich! Didn’t you ever see Forrest Gump? :rolleyes:
Probably because luck alone only factors in if we are talking about lottery winners. Certainly just being born into wealth only needs luck, but building that original wealth as well as maintaining it takes more than blind luck…which is why most people only say luck is a factor.
-XT
The book Outliers does a lot to dispel this notion of luck. But one of the more interesting case studies was of two super geniuses, one from a rich family the other from poverty. Both get full scholarship to the best school, and both get into academic trouble resulting in expulsion. The difference between them was that the rich genius felt entitled and fought the charges eventually getting to finish his degree and go on to success. The child from poverty took it as another example he was meant to be poor, gave up, and went home to a live of poverty. So yes, culture plays a huge role.
I think a pretty quick way to prove the OP would be to look at adopted children born to poor parents but raised in middle class. Sadly what little I’ve read on that topic tends to favour nature over nurture.
One last thing, consider the first five years of a child born in poverty vs wealth. Prenatal vitamins, a focus on health and nutrition, parents interested in reading to their child, as well as interested in stimulative games and toys.
No, luck is significantly more than that.
You are lucky if you are born wealthy, true enough, but you are also lucky if you are born white or if you are born to parents who value education or any number of other attributes over which you have no control. Even the most basic things like having proper prenatal care and the age of your parents can make a huge difference throughout your entire life.
My impending baby is incredibly lucky that before I got pregnant and in the first several weeks of my pregnancy I was taking a fiber supplement that happened to have 800mcg of folic acid. Considering that I didn’t know I was pregnant until I was about 7 weeks along it was a complete stroke of luck that a product I was already taking was essentially a prenatal vitamin designed to prevent neural tube disorders. She is also lucky that her father and I consider education to be incredibly important and have already started a collection of books for her and started looking at the best schools in our neighborhood even though she won’t be born until November.
Hopefully my husband and I will be lucky and have a happy, healthy baby that grows into a happy, healthy adult but we are fully aware that we only have so much control over that. If she ends up being really sick or suffers a serious injury we could be set back hundreds of thousands of dollars taking care of her which would dramatically change the course our lives are on right this moment. Once you’re dealt a hand what you do with it is your own responsibility, of course, but it is quite a bit easier to win at poker when you are dealt a full house at almost every hand.
If you magically turned the entire world’s population into Warren Buffet clones in short order you would have a teeny percentage of rich Warren Buffets who are wealthy and a whole lot of Warren Buffet ditch diggers and apple pickers.
Impoverished people born with Down Syndrome?
For people that do not have gross developmental abnormalities does the question you are asking reflect your personal experiences? It really does not for me. Unfortunately, that is not data and google scholar gives me nothing but a bunch of racism articles.
On the other hand, I did find this article that demonstrates why two people of equal cognitive ability, one poor, one not poor might have entirely different outcomes and why a poorer person might have a harder time with getting to the decisions that would make them not poor:
So we have this resource we can run out of, similar to attention or working memory (self-control certainly involves both) or anything else cognitive. The article describes an experiment to show what happens when self-control is forced:
This idea and research was applied to the fact that purchasing decisions for poor people usually involves a balancing of finances and exertion of self-control. Wealthier people do not need to think about it. They can just buy stuff. There is apparently experimental support:
I sympathize with the results because I was once a poor college student and these kinds of decisions cropped up all the time and I can’t imagine how much worse it would be to be truly poor. My personal reaction is to get irritated at having to think about these things and is the main reason why I want nationalized health insurance: I don’t want to have to think about it!
You can also start to extrapolate more generally from such findings. Impoverished people live in many ways completely different circumstances than wealthier people. In my students I see this difference in very basic ways, such as the assumption that education can get you anything and the willingness to borrow short-term for an education that will benefit them long-term.
So yeah, there may be a very distinct group of individuals who are going to be entrenched in poverty simply due to intelligence, but I think it is truly an unimportant minority. This is especially true when formulating policy for educating people.
Speaking from personal experience, I know a large number of intelligent people from all over the economic ladder and it’s difficult or impossible to draw any meaningful correlation with intelligence. Sure, there are plenty of intelligent people I know who are doing well for themselves, but I also know plenty of intelligent people who fail because of other faults, like laziness, lack of opportunities, or misfortune. Similarly, I know plenty of average or below average people who succed despite their lack of intelligence because of other positive qualities, like industriousness, opportunities, or good fortune.
Since the discussion has invariably turned towards ‘luck’, I’ll just give my two cents then retire and let you guys vector the thread wherever you wish it to go:
And if you have no motivation, or decide to pursue a destructive lifestyle, then where will you be at the end of the day? Luck is certainly a factor…but motivation, skill and drive are all factors as well. Luck only gets you so far. I have rich white friends and acquaintances…their children are no better off than mine as far as what they have done with their lives after they have grown up. In many cases they are markedly worse off, with all the drugs and issues they have. In most cases of rich friends kids they aren’t going to do even as well as their parents have done, and will probably end up with standards of living below what their folks had…in some cases far below. By the same token I have friends from my old neighborhood who’s kids are doing good (and many who are doing bad), and who will easily surpass many of my rich friends kids. Luck? Maybe to some degree, but in the end it’s individual drive and motivation that makes people excel…or not. Luck only takes you so far.
-XT