

Ask HN: is there a wealth gene? - borism

today I encountered something that was quite disturbing to me on HN (apparently such thinking splits HN in half, as the opinion has gained quite a few upvotes so it's now in zero territory):<p><i>Low upward mobility shouldn't be considered a bad thing -- in fact, it's a sign of a functioning meritocracy along with the fact that merit is at least partially inheirited.<p>Rich people tend to be smart, smart people tend to have smart children, smart children tend to grow up to be rich, and so rich people wind up having rich children. Rich people would have rich children even in a society where all children were taken away from their parents at birth and raised communally.<p>Add to this the fact that children also pick up financial literacy and values (good or bad) from their parents, and there's your low upward mobility right there. I doubt if the other effects (i.e. rich children inheirit wealth and can often get into better schools) are nearly as important as the genetics of it.</i><p>Couldn't believe that there is anyone who can believe what one responder called Social Darwinism nowadays, but apparently there are plenty of supporters. One of them writes:<p><i>On a factual level, you're right (and don't deserve all those downvotes). Every study I've seen suggests a strong correlation between genetics and intelligence, between intelligence and income, and between income and wealth. When you multiply them out, the correlation becomes somewhat less, but it still seems like a fair statement to say that genetics is correlated with wealth.</i><p>When confronted with question about what study can they point to there is silence. Only one user (who doesn't seem to agree with the premise) has been able to point to something:<p><i>On #1, income is correlated with intelligence, but from the studies I can find, wealth is much more poorly correlated, if at all:<p>http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2007.02.003</i><p>OK, but here's aforementioned author's review of his own work:<p><i>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.' "<p>http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/AHighIQIsNoFinancialGuarantee.aspx</i><p>Anyway, the question is: do you believe that there is positive correlation between genetics, IQ and wealth?
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pavs
> Anyway, the question is: do you believe that there is positive correlation
> between genetics, IQ and wealth?

No. If you ask for specifics I can gives you more than few dozen examples of
dumb rich and intelligent poor people.

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motters
Social Darwinism of this sort, which was closely linked with the eugenics
movement of the early 20th century, is pretty much discredited these days.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism>

In answer to your question I would say that I'm not aware of any evidence
which strongly links IQ to wealth, and anecdotally I've known plenty of very
intelligent people who were also poor, and a few wealthy individuals who I had
an extremely low opinion of intellectually. I'm also sceptical about the whole
nature of IQ, and think that it's probably not reasonable to assume that
intelligence is one dimensional.

