Study says people with money have higher IQ
Poverty is considered to be the root cause of a long list of evils — from poor health and malnutrition to crimes against women to skewed sex ratios, from cynical vote-bank politics to widening income inequality, and so on. Now, one can also add low IQ scores to that list. Recent research that Harvard University conducted has found that poverty has a direct and debilitating impact on one's intelligence and cognitive abilities. It is, of course, commonly acknowledged that due to a lack of access to societal resources, especially quality education, the poor often cannot compete with the rich in terms of personal development. For example, even if a poor student might innately be just as intelligent as a rich one, the former may not do equally well in standardised tests. But what the Harvard study points to is much more radical — that the mere availability of more cash in one’s pocket can increase one’s IQ score! The study, which also covered 464 sugarcane farmers in India, who were given the same IQ tests before and after the annual harvest, found that the subjects performed better after the harvest than before. Researchers have concluded that this difference is because after the harvest the farmers had more cash in hand and were relatively secure in financial terms. Because their minds were not weighed down by money troubles, the farmers were in a better position to focus on other tasks; hence the increased the IQ scores and better cognitive performance. In fact, the difference in the before and after scores was by as many as nine to 10 IQ points (on a 100 point scale). That is a significant jump. The linkage between financial worries and IQ scores seems to have borne out in other parts of the world as well. Researchers also tested rich and poor shoppers at a New Jersey mall in the US, and the subjects performed on similar lines, throwing up a difference of as many as 13 IQ points.
This direct correlation between financial security and increased intelligence reiterates the overall connection between poverty, education, growth and development, which must be effectively addressed in a young, emerging economy like India. The country's teeming millions are viewed as its most important social capital. Half the Indian population today is below the age of 25 and more than 65 per cent of it is below the age of 35 — in other words, India now has a large and productive labour force that can drive economic growth in the immediate future. It is estimated that over the next two decades, this ‘demographic dividend' could add about two percentage points per annum to the nation’s per capita GDP growth. However, India's ‘demographic dividend' could become its demographic curse if there is no education or employment for the country's young. Not only will India lose an incredible development opportunity, it will also have a harder time than China and Japan in dealing with an ageing population that never had the opportunity to develop skills and save for their twilight years.