# Poverty and Intelligence **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 22, 2011, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008 "2011-07-22T18:35:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/201 "2011-07-29T08:32:00Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > I agree, I support social programs because I hate the rich, and want them to be stripped of absolutely all of their money, not because I have human empathy for those who are worse off than me. Yeah fuck those jerks for having more money than me! ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/202 "2011-07-29T08:58:20Z")
> [@erez](#): > > What a weak straw man… Did I claim that these proven correlations between personality traits and income somehow explain all causes of poverty, especially when comparing different decades (and centuries!) and completely different countries? Did I claim that nothing could be done to reduce the number of poor people? How did you ever arrive at such ridiculous conclusions from the results of these studies? I’m sorry if you cannot accept that these traits do affect income and prefer to deny the reality. > > BTW, according to [http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2009/pov09fig04.pdf](http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/incpovhlth/2009/pov09fig04.pdf), the poverty rate in 1959 was around 22%, not 10%. You didn’t answer a single one of my questions. Why not? And a proven correlation proves what? That one thing causes the other? Which direction is the causation going here? For example, you say that one of the things causing poverty is “less competence”. Do you think poverty might cause decreases in competence because poor people have access to lower quality schools? What does that say about solutions to poverty? You’re right, in 1959 the poverty rate was 22%. It didn’t fall to 11% until 1973. So, what happened between 1959 and 1973? Every single one of your reasons for poverty was a personal failing. That is, you are blaming poor people for their own poverty. Did people improve themselves by 11% between 1959 and 1973? You say “Did I claim that nothing could be done to reduce the number of poor people?” So, how low can we go, and how do we get there? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/203 "2011-07-29T09:02:38Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Edit, can you explain the thought process that starts with “poor people don’t understand personal finance” and ends with “we need to cut social programs”? I would think that would result in the opposite conclusion. You’re an evil economist. You should understand the concept of moral hazard. How much does society bear the responsibility to support people who can’t balance a budget, can’t make good life choices, make no effort to educate themselves or get involved in drugs and alchohol? > [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Do you think those 44 million people deserve to be poor because they are less competent, less dutiful, less self-disciplined, less stable, and work fewer hours? Do you think they want to be poor? I had this friend from high school. Not a particularly smart or hardworking guy. In the years after HS he went off to community college and subsequently failed out. He lived at home with his parents for awhile. He never had any money but used to complain that he would never work at McDonalds with those losers. I’m like you are a community college dropout living with his parents. Where the fuck do you think you SHOULD be working? ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/204 "2011-07-29T17:01:07Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I had this friend from high school. Not a particularly smart or hardworking guy. In the years after HS he went off to community college and subsequently failed out. He lived at home with his parents for awhile. He never had any money but used to complain that he would never work at McDonalds with those losers. I’m like you are a community college dropout living with his parents. Where the fuck do you think you SHOULD be working? Yeah, that accounts for some of the poor in this country. _Some_, not all. Success is a three-legged stool, supported by talent, hard work, and luck. The legs don’t have to be even for it to hold you up, and the longer they are the higher you sit. But kick any one of the legs out or even just whittle it down to a nub, and your ass hits the floor. It doesn’t matter how talented at golf you are and how hard you’re willing to practice…if there aren’t any courses for you to play on, you’re never going to be Tiger Woods. It doesn’t matter how hard you’ll work and how many opportunities you have…if you don’t have the voice, you’re never going to be Michael Jackson. It doesn’t matter how smart you are and how many computers there are for you to play with…if you’re not willing to spend 10,000 hours learning to program them, you’re never going to be Bill Gates. You can swap any of these names and factors around and it’s equally true; all three factors were necessary. Laying these people’s mega-success at the feet of any one factor is just plain silly. Some people are poor because they’re just plain dumb and don’t have the faculties to hold a good job or make good financial decisions. They might work their asses off and have all kinds of opportunities, but their stool is missing a leg so they’re sitting on the floor. Some people, like your friend, are poor because they’re just plain lazy. They might be terribly smart and have lots of opportunities (how much poorer would your buddy be if his parents weren’t willing to take him in?), but again the stool is missing a leg and they’re on the floor. And other people are poor because they just have a lack of opportunities and luck. Okay, I know the word luck is getting knickers in a knot. Let’s use the word happenstance instead, if it makes you feel better; you’re not _lucky_ to be born to educated, responsible parents in a first-world country instead of to an illiterate, drug-addicted prostitute in a third-world slum, it just happened that way. But the truth still remains that starting conditions matter to the final product. It matters in chemistry, it matters in cooking, and it matters in life. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/205 "2011-07-29T18:01:09Z")
**mssmith** , in another thread, weren’t you _just_ talking about how you were a slacker in school? I think you mentioned that you wouldn’t have been arsed to apply yourself and get an A in physics had it not been for a girl who called you dumb or something like that. And then you mentioned that this A helped to get you admitted to the best engineering school in the country. How lucky that such a twerp was in your life to provoke you into proving yourself, because otherwise you might have kept on acting like a slacking dumbass. Yes I know, it’s pathetic that I pulled all of this from memory. Anything to prove my point, though… ---
**Author:** ![perfectparanoia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@perfectparanoia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/perfectparanoia)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/206 "2011-07-29T18:37:24Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > 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. I know we have moved way past this but… Sadly, you need to take into account that most ‘studies’ of adopted children: 1. Are self-reported (i.e. a lot of adopted kids opt out). 2. Include both children who were adopted from birth and those that were not. Let’s take a look at my kids. They were 5 and 6 when they were placed with us and 2 and 3 when removed from their parents’ care. It’s been just over 18 months and we have worked (very hard, I might add) so that they are almost caught up with the other kids in school and they have almost gotten to the point where their actual age is close to their social age. Frankly, my son was neglected to the point that he was scared to talk. So, he didn’t. Guess what? His language is behind. My daughter never had someone to read to her or sing the ABC’s with her or count with her. She’s behind in math to the point that I am pretty sure that she will never catch up. Yeah, yeah, anecdote time, you say, right? We were told when we made the decision to not adopt a newborn that we should expect this. And that they might never overcome the setbacks that their early life dealt them. And these kids were only with their parents for a few short years. There are kid who get adopted in their teens. How do you think they will do on your standardized tests? (Spoken by a first generation Canadian who’s grandparents came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs and now live the life of multi-millionaires.) ---
**Author:** ![Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/aca169/32.png) [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inbred_Mm_domesticus)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/207 "2011-07-29T19:19:07Z")
I keep following this thread mostly because I have yet to see how so much anecdote is brought up to replace scientific study (The last post is such a perfect example.). Also, I’ve never seen anyplace that finds sociology more informative than social/cognitive/experimental psychology on why individuals might find it difficult to move out of the SES they were born with. Just out of curiosity, why are you luck people focusing on children and adolescents so much? It does, in a way, support your point that ‘circumstances of birth matters’ when you are an infant without control over your environment. How come the only adult stories provided by the “luckies” are anecdotes and fact-free accounts of famous people (look up what Tiger Woods had to say about his father ‘pushing’ him to play golf)? Could it possibly be that your circumstances of birth means less and less as you age and what you make of yourself is more about what decisions you make as an adult? I’d never thought I’d find myself siding with conservatives on this topic but you really should give credit to people where credit is due. It’s odd, but if I was in a physics class and some girl called em dumb because she wanted attention from me, then I turned around and got an A, I’d say my reaction, my stunning attractiveness and character got me that A - not the off-hand comment of some random person. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/208 "2011-07-29T19:47:08Z")
Actually **perfectparanoia** the adoption studies are quite rigorous. [“Intelligence” is highly hereditable.](http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n6/full/5201588a.html) That’s a pretty huge body of research reviewed there to try to hand wave away. Admittedly my cite is a very academic treatment of the subject; if you’d like the information in a less dense presentation try [this Freakonomics bit](http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/14/pm-freaknomics-how-much-influence-does-a-parent-have-on-a-childs-education). > [@](#): > > DUBNER: Exactly right. If parents are so important, then parents can take an adopted kid who might otherwise not have gone to college, and that kid will become college material. So Sacerdote sliced and diced a lot of good data and he did find parental influence. > > BRUCE SACERDOTE: But it’s not quite as big as I expected to find. > > RYSSDAL: All right, so quantify for me: how big is not so big? > > DUBNER: If you’re a child who’s adopted into a high-education family – that is where the parents both went to college – you are about 16 percentage points more likely to go to college than a kid who gets adopted into a low-education family. So that sounds pretty good, OK? > > Until you compare that to the rate for biological kids from high-education families, who are about 75 percentage points more likely to go to college than biological kids from low-education families. So on the one hand, this is a little dispiriting for parents. We don’t seem to have as much influence as we might think. On the other hand, in a weird way, it kind of takes some of the pressure off, right? At least it did for Bruce Sacerdote. > > SACERDOTE: This notion that genes are really important and that kids are hard-wired to do certain things, I think understanding that did help me relax and not worry so much that I was going “screw them up” in some terrible way. > > RYSSDAL: OK, so that’s a good thought. But I have two observations to make. The first, as an adoptive parent – and maybe this says more about me than about Sacerdote’s numbers – but it is 100 percent likely that my adopted daughter is going to go to college, just like my biological boys. So I guess that probably talks about me. But the other one is: there is more to measuring the success of parenting and the resulting children than where they to go college, or even if they go to college at all, Dubner. > > DUBNER: Absolutely. There’s love and happiness and satisfaction – all that good stuff. But here’s the thing: the data seem to suggest that a lot of parents who get wrapped up in activist-parenting, who push their kids toward accomplishment, might actually make themselves unhappy as parents and might end up sacrificing some of that good stuff. So that’s really the balance. Now I am with the host, Ryssdal, on this one. There is zero chance that my adopted daughter will not go to college, just like her three brothers who are biological children. But whether she is more or less intelligent than her siblings, or more likely the fact that she is intelligent in a very different pattern than her siblings, is most due to her genetics, next most due to her peers and just chance, and last of all me and my wife. Our job is to make sure that she has every chance to grow to be the best her she can be, give her the tools and resources to do that, and to respect her for who she is. And to help her develop her values. Of course the exact same as for her siblings. The brain is not a “blank slate”. And among Pinker’s points, in his book of that name (with some of his schtick summarized [here](http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/Psy101_notes/nature%20or%20nurture.htm)), was that such _does not_ justify the lack of equal opportunities that currently exist. A person born into poverty is not getting the same tools and resources and as naive as it is to deny that genetics does not impact intelligence and by so doing impact outcomes, it is even more ignorant to believe that the systemic lack of opportunities does not effect outcomes as well. ---
**Author:** ![OneMissedPost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e7dd6/32.png) [@OneMissedPost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneMissedPost)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/209 "2011-07-29T19:49:04Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > If luck is the major reason poor people are poor, how are we supposed to help them? Will giving them money change their luck? You ask very interesting questions. If someone was naturally unlucky, giving that person money would not do any good because they would just be unlucky again. What if we say that a person is poor because of the choices he or she made? If that person initially made the wrong choice with money, giving that person money MIGHT help said person because they have a CHANCE to make the correct choice. > [@emacknight](#): > > It seems preordained that the poor person is poor because he is unlucky, and thus will remain poor because he will remain unlucky. I think it is easy to blame poverty on bad luck. I could blow all my money and just say it was because I was not lucky. That does not seem realistic. It seems more realistic that it would be the result of bad choices. > [@emacknight](#): > > If in that scenario someone cooked up about an unlucky person being unable to find food, what’s to say that providing him food will keep him from starving? If you take 35% of the apples I lucked upon, and distribute them to the unlucky, what’s to say they won’t continue to suffer bad luck like dropping the apple, getting e. coli, or choking to death? > > And if you think I’m being difficult, consider how many people go bankrupt after winning the lottery. What percentage of winners do you suppose use that “luck” to better their lives, and what percentage of winners blow it all? Well said! I agree! People also have to be intelligent enough to know how to use their money wisely. It seems that an intelligent person would know how to use their money wisely and that is how intelligence might have an effect on poverty. What I’m getting at is that it seems realistic that poverty would be the result of bad choices and lack of intelligence (at least when it comes to managing money). ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/210 "2011-07-29T20:26:23Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > Just out of curiosity, why are you luck people focusing on children and adolescents so much? It does, in a way, support your point that ‘circumstances of birth matters’ when you are an infant without control over your environment. The question is why _shouldn’t_ we focus on children and adolescents? I mean, that’s when the rat race begins, right? If you start the race ten feet behind the average, that means you have ten feet of disadvantage to overcome just to be average socioeconomically. It’s not as though rich kids and poor kids start out in equal positions and then dramatically diverge sometime in adulthood. Just about everyone who has become famous for something was working on that something from an early age. Even if that “something” was as miniscule as learning about a favorite subject in school that ultimately helped them attain their career. > [@](#): > > How come the only adult stories provided by the “luckies” are anecdotes and fact-free accounts of famous people (look up what Tiger Woods had to say about his father ‘pushing’ him to play golf)? What kind of “facts” are you looking for? There is plenty of facts to support the role of the environment on achievement, and the environment includes everything from parental nurturing to educational enrichment. Do you need a study to tell you that the average kid in the Appalachia will have a harder time becoming a Nobel Laureate than an average kid in Bethesda, MD? > [@](#): > > Could it possibly be that your circumstances of birth means less and less as you age and what you make of yourself is more about what decisions you make as an adult? Depends on how bad those circumstances of birth are, doesn’t it? Say you’re born to crackhead parents and put into the foster system. The man of the house sexually abuses you for several years. Finally, you run away and end up moving in with a guy that is bad for you, but you’re just a silly, love-deprived kid, so what the hell do you know. Then you end up pregnant at the age of 15. The father of the child is no-account and abusive. You move out with a special needs child, no money, no support system, and are half illiterate because the school you attended (before you dropped out) was one of the worst in the nation. Your circumstances of birth in some shape or form contributed to this outcome, right? Those circumstances had pivotal consequences that are going to be difficult (but not impossible) to override. Yes, these circumstances mean less and less as you age, but it’s naive to say “what you make of yourself is more about what decisions you make as an adult”. Because the decisions we make as kids and teenagers often greatly influence the decisions that are in our power to make as adults. And if you leave adolescence without the skills you need to thrive as an adult, there is no one legally obligated (like a parent) to help you. You will more than likely flounder. That said, this discussion is not about what an individual can do. For the upteenth time, it’s about society. We can hold an individual accountability for what they choose to do with their lives, while at the same time acknowledge that poor people come into this world with barriers in their path and that it’s crazy to expect all of them to leapfrog over them gracefully. > [@](#): > > It’s odd, but if I was in a physics class and some girl called em dumb because she wanted attention from me, then I turned around and got an A, I’d say my reaction, my stunning attractiveness and character got me that A - not the off-hand comment of some random person. I think it’s interesting that he was motivated to earn an A at the exact moment someone called him dumb. Paradoxically, he had people all of his life calling him smart, and in return he showed them slacker grades. Did he ever think that he need to prove them right? No, he didn’t. From that account alone, you can tell what socioeconomic level **mssmith** was privileged enough to be born into. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/211 "2011-07-29T20:36:42Z")
> [@OneMissedPost](#): > > If someone was naturally unlucky, giving that person money would not do any good because they would just be unlucky again… Really? You really believe “luck” works like that? Wow. So if I happen to be betting on rolling double sixes, and do three times in a row with a fair set of dice, you really think that I have a better chance at rolling double sixes next time than someone else. If I am betting that the next card out of a fair deck is anything other than a hearts and I am wrong four times in a row (hearts are pulled four times in row) you are really thinking that more likely to be unlucky the next time as well, more than someone else placing the same bet? Look, the game currently is to try to get three in a row with the cards dealt to you. Sure some are dealt better cards than others. And some have better judgement about what cards to keep and which to toss each turn. Over the course of many hands the players with better judgement will win more hands even when they have a run of bad luck. But some of us are systematically being able to play with hands that have 10 cards at a time and some only 4. Some are getting more chances to pull from the deck than others as well. The rules are not the same for all the players. This is the real world. ---
**Author:** ![OneMissedPost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e7dd6/32.png) [@OneMissedPost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneMissedPost)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/212 "2011-07-29T20:51:28Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Really? You really believe “luck” works like that? > > Look, the game currently is to try to get three in a row with the cards dealt to you. Sure some are dealt better cards than others. And some have better judgement about what cards to keep and which to toss each turn. Over the course of many hands the players with better judgement will win more hands even when they have a run of bad luck. But some of us are systematically being able to play with hands that have 10 cards at a time and some only 4. Some are getting more chances to pull from the deck than others as well. The rules are not the same for all the players. This is the real world. Yes, I agree with that some people get more chances than others. I also agree that people have to deal with the cards that they are dealt. I agree that it is all based on chance. Choices are a part of the chance aspect of life. You get chances to make choices. Some people make the wrong choice and some people make the right choice. Some people are not able to recover from the wrong choices that they make. Being financially wise would allow someone to be better equiped at making the correct choice. Whether or not we agree on what “luck” is would be pointless to debate. We could have an endless discussion on what we think “luck” truly is. The point is that I was agreeing with raising the question that if we were to give an unlucky person money, would that change their “luck”? I was not providing a definition for the word “luck” as you seem to think. I was merely adding food for thought. Sorry for the confusion. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/213 "2011-07-29T20:58:10Z")
> [@OneMissedPost](#): > > You ask very interesting questions. If someone was naturally unlucky, giving that person money would not do any good because they would just be unlucky again. Do you really think we’re talking about luck in this kind of way? Could this really be the take-home message you have gotten out of this thread? That some people are just inherently unlucky, like a curse that causes them to ruin everything they touch? Earlier, when **emacknight** opined that “Outliers” actually _dispells_ the role of luck on success, I seriously thought I was being whooshed. But then he went on to argue this with apparent sincerity. And I had to readjust my expectations. Are you yanking our legs here? ---
**Author:** ![OneMissedPost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e7dd6/32.png) [@OneMissedPost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneMissedPost)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/214 "2011-07-29T21:07:32Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Do you really think we’re talking about luck in this kind of way? Could this really be the take-home message you have gotten out of this thread? That some people are just inherently unlucky, like a curse that causes them to ruin everything they touch? > > Earlier, when **emacknight** opined that “Outliers” actually _dispells_ the role of luck on success, I seriously thought I was being whooshed. But then he went on to argue this with apparent sincerity. And I had to readjust my expectations. > > Are you yanking our legs here? If you are going to quote me, at least read my posts. I will simplify it for you: Take home message=You get chances to make choices. Some people make the wrong choice and some people make the right choice. Some people are not able to recover from the wrong choices that they make. Being financially wise would allow someone to be better equiped at making the correct choice. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/215 "2011-07-29T21:13:42Z")
> [@OneMissedPost](#): > > If you are going to quote me, at least read my posts. I did read what you wrote, and it was perfectly reasonable to interpret it as 100%foolishness. Please note as well that at least one other person shared my interpretation. If that is not what you meant, great. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/216 "2011-07-29T21:39:15Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > I had this friend from high school. Not a particularly smart or hardworking guy. In the years after HS he went off to community college and subsequently failed out. He lived at home with his parents for awhile. He never had any money but used to complain that he would never work at McDonalds with those losers. I’m like you are a community college dropout living with his parents. Where the fuck do you think you SHOULD be working? This is actually an interesting data point. One thing I noticed is that this guy, despite being a slacker of average intellect, was probably never technically poor. The statistics would probably show him as solidly middle-class just as long as he was living under his parents roof. Not unlike my ex-BF that I mentioned earlier, who was lucky to be able to live rent-free with his 10th grade teacher so that he could get earn an MBA, do some navel-gazing, and figure out what to do with himself. I’m wondering what your friend is doing now, **msmith**. Is he doing okay for himself? Is he living with his middle-class parents? Or he is so bad off that he’s living in a project or trailer somewhere like he would if he was truely poor. I have my doubts that he was ever at real risk of being poor. ---
**Author:** ![OneMissedPost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e7dd6/32.png) [@OneMissedPost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneMissedPost)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/217 "2011-07-29T21:50:28Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > This is actually an interesting data point. One thing I noticed is that this guy, despite being a slacker of average intellect, was probably never technically poor. The statistics would probably show him as solidly middle-class just as long as he was living under his parents roof. Not unlike my ex-BF that I mentioned earlier, who was lucky to be able to live rent-free with his 10th grade teacher so that he could get earn an MBA, do some navel-gazing, and figure out what to do with himself. > > I’m wondering what your friend is doing now, **msmith**. Is he doing okay for himself? Is he living with his middle-class parents? Or he is so bad off that he’s living in a project or trailer somewhere like he would if he was truely poor. > > I have my doubts that he was ever at real risk of being poor. If he was living at home, chances are he his still living at home unless his parents have kicked him out. He seems like a boomerang child. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/218 "2011-07-29T22:05:24Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Actually **perfectparanoia** the adoption studies are quite rigorous. [“Intelligence” is highly hereditable.](http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v14/n6/full/5201588a.html) I’m not familiar with science around intelligence testing, but I skimmed that article, and noticed that it said: “Heritability of intelligence might not be the same for all levels of social background. There is an apparent paradox between the low estimates of c2 for intelligence in middle childhood and the fact that, when children are rescued from poverty, their IQ tends to become higher than other family members.” Following the cite, I get: “Results demonstrate that the proportions of IQ variance attributable to genes and environment vary nonlinearly with SES. The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse.” Welll…there’s something to think about. Wonder if that’ll change anyone’s opinion. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/219 "2011-07-29T22:06:46Z")
> [@OneMissedPost](#): > > If he was living at home, chances are he his still living at home unless his parents have kicked him out. He seems like a boomerang child. Not necessarily, though. My ex- had all the markings of a boomerage child too, but he managed to move out and get his own place eventually. The half a year he spent living with his teacher-mom gave him just enough time to get his life in order, mature, and save money. He moved out when he was ready; teacher-mom didn’t have to kick him out. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008/220 "2011-07-30T00:04:32Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > Yeah, that accounts for some of the poor in this country. _Some_, not all. > > Success is a three-legged stool, supported by talent, hard work, and luck. The legs don’t have to be even for it to hold you up, and the longer they are the higher you sit. But kick any one of the legs out or even just whittle it down to a nub, and your ass hits the floor. It doesn’t matter how talented at golf you are and how hard you’re willing to practice…if there aren’t any courses for you to play on, you’re never going to be Tiger Woods. It doesn’t matter how hard you’ll work and how many opportunities you have…if you don’t have the voice, you’re never going to be Michael Jackson. It doesn’t matter how smart you are and how many computers there are for you to play with…if you’re not willing to spend 10,000 hours learning to program them, you’re never going to be Bill Gates. You can swap any of these names and factors around and it’s equally true; all three factors were necessary. Laying these people’s mega-success at the feet of any one factor is just plain silly. > > Some people are poor because they’re just plain dumb and don’t have the faculties to hold a good job or make good financial decisions. They might work their asses off and have all kinds of opportunities, but their stool is missing a leg so they’re sitting on the floor. Some people, like your friend, are poor because they’re just plain lazy. They might be terribly smart and have lots of opportunities (how much poorer would your buddy be if his parents weren’t willing to take him in?), but again the stool is missing a leg and they’re on the floor. And other people are poor because they just have a lack of opportunities and luck. > > Okay, I know the word luck is getting knickers in a knot. Let’s use the word happenstance instead, if it makes you feel better; you’re not _lucky_ to be born to educated, responsible parents in a first-world country instead of to an illiterate, drug-addicted prostitute in a third-world slum, it just happened that way. > > But the truth still remains that starting conditions matter to the final product. It matters in chemistry, it matters in cooking, and it matters in life. QFT. > [@msmith537](#): > > I had this friend from high school. Not a particularly smart or hardworking guy. In the years after HS he went off to community college and subsequently failed out. He lived at home with his parents for awhile. He never had any money but used to complain that he would never work at McDonalds with those losers. I’m like you are a community college dropout living with his parents. Where the fuck do you think you SHOULD be working? I went to school with kids who were upper middle-class and weren’t smart (or at least they had a big weakness in a particular academic subject). For instance, I remember in the eighth grade, a “new” girl joining my class. Rumor had it she had attended the premier private school just up the street. But she wasn’t in the gifted and talented program like almost all the kids in her demographic were. She was in the “regular” classes. Nice girl, not a bad kid at all, but I remember how she always struggled to read out loud. I think she was the worse reader I’d ever knowingly encountered in middle school. I don’t know how she was in other subjects, but I don’t think she was “smart” by most definitions. I’m imagining myself being her. Upper middle-class, constantly compared to the other bright-and-shiny faced, up-and-coming kids in her social circle, and always coming up short. She was pretty–I remember that. So she had that working for her. But I imagine there were nights when she cried herself to sleep because she couldn’t meet the expectations everyone had for her. To me, despite her SSE, she got played a bad deck. Perhaps she was dyslexic or slow or whatever, but I don’t think she lacked a work ethic. She just didn’t seem the type. But I’m also imagining that her social class has protected her from the result of her lack of smarts, making them irrevelant now. Perhaps she has a good, low-stress job working for a friend of her father’s, or she’s a happy stay-at-home mom to a Fortune 500 CEO or a top-notch lawyer. She may have had a bad deck when it came to school, but once she reached adulthood, it didn’t matter anymore because the game was ultimately stacked in her favor from the beginning. (Thing is, I have no doubt that there were people who probably DID think she was lazy, simply because she had all these advantages and yet didn’t achieve. And if she had been lower middle-class or poor, she wouldn’t have been placed in regular classes. They may have pegged her as slow and put her in steerage–the remedial classes where kids come out worse than they come in.) So perhaps your friend had tried his best but it just looked like he wasn’t trying. Or maybe at one time he did try, but stopped because it was too hard and frustrating and he realized he wasn’t cut out for the rat race. I suppose the philosophical query is found in the second scenario. How much of that can we lay at his feet and how much can we lay at external factors beyond his control? Your friend did have the fortune of being able to drop out of college and land in his parents’ home. That cushion is a fortunate thing to have, correct? His choice not to work at McDonalds may end up biting him in the ass (which would make his laziness a poor choice). But he may wake up one day with a dream and decide to do something that will lead to success, like starting up a unique business. If that were to happen, would he not deserve kudos for deciding not to waste his talents by working at McDonald’s? The fact that we can’t know what the consequences of our actions (or inactions) are until they catch up to us means that a lot of what happens to us is a crap shoot, right? I’m not saying that some decisions aren’t smart or dumb on their very face. But a lot of decisions do not fall into a “good”/“bad” binary. Yesterday, I chose to drive up to Annapolis to participate in a farewell party for someone I just have a slightly weak work-related contact with. It was a hot three-hour trip in an old jalopey. I took off from work to do this. Who knows what I might have missed at work? My division director might have called my office just to chit-chat about ice cream, like she did last week, and I would have missed another (strange but funny) opportunity to show myself to be a capable conversationalist to my new uber-boss. But if I hadn’t gone up to Annapolis, I wouldn’t have been able rub shoulders with the big federal honchos who have a lot of say over how the work of my department (which has my name stamped all over it) is scrutinized. THAT would have been a missed opportunity. I could have also gotten into a bad car accident, since I rarely drive and I wouldn’t say I’m the best driver in the world. That would have been horrible, and Future Monstro would have decided the whole venture up to Annapolis was a stupid tragic mistake, what the hell was I thinking driving up there in a 17-year-old hoopty! That’s what makes life scary to some people, I think. Every decision you make takes you down a path, and it takes a combination of innate and learned skills to navigate your way to the good ones and retrack when you’re on a bad one. Since it’s impossible to know when you’re on a bad one until the badness hits, then you also have to have some fallback or insurance policy. You can do your best to make sure you have enough pillows to catch your fall, but your ability to do this is a function of how successful you are at that particular moment. If I had gotten into a bad accident, one that left me severely injured and without a car, I would have been screwed but not all would have been lost. I have a dependable family, I have health insurance, I have a good amount of savings, I have short- and long-term sick leave. I also have a job that values my brainpower over my physical labor. So one could say that I am better prepared at engaging in most kinds of risky behavior than most people on this planet. That makes me more likely to be more successful than most people on this planet. You can attribute all the credit to me, but I can’t 'cuz I know the truth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-and-intelligence/590008.md?page=12)