
Analysis: How poverty can drive down intelligence - pulisse
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-how-poverty-can-drive-down-intelligence
======
mancerayder
I think there are class cultural habits ingrained that may ALSO play a role
(the study described seems to talk about stress).

I live surrounded by thousands of people in NYCHA housing, as well as live in
an area with a poverty rate in the 40 percent range. Now, one thing that
strikes me every day, and moreso in the warmer months, is the amount of noise
people live within. In stores, a radio plays everything including commercials,
while in the courtyards of the buildings people blast music at extremely high
levels. And it's not the opera they're blasting, either. It's music that
demands attention with massive bass. Cars park with their trunks open doing
the same. Now if children grow up in these environments, how in the world can
they have sharpened minds if they're assaulted by loud, distracting noise
during every weekend and evening?

I don't know how strong a factor this is globally, but I'm pretty confident
it's something that should be researched and perhaps, just like we have
nutritional health research and recommendations, we should also have
'environmental' ones that include noise levels and effects on children and
stress. The poor need it more than anyone since they have no choice. The rest
of us move (or help gentrify away noise, if I'm cynical).

~~~
goldenkey
Really depends on the person. Many people like myself with ADD type symptoms
get better focus by having background sensory input. Helps to alleviate
boredom and fatigue. Of course, many things can still be obnoxious. Id agree
having a choice is a better life

~~~
mancerayder
That's really interesting. I don't have ADD but I'm extremely sensitive to
distractions - that includes noise (mostly). I wonder how much noisier the
world has gotten given how many more people seem to be diagnosed with ADD.

~~~
pasbesoin
It's also counter to what many people with ADD experience and comment upon.

Some people, including medical professionals, will lump me into the ADD camp;
others not. The condition and diagnosis themselves seem broad and with unclear
boundaries. Perhaps think of the "autistic spectrum" as a superficial (and
insufficient; nonetheless) comparison.

I'm very sensitive to human noise; I cannot "just tune it out" and concentrate
despite its presence. I spent years, decades, struggling with aspects of
school, work, society, that insisted I do and that I just needed to "get used
to it".

I agree with other comments here that greater consideration needs to be given
to environment. For myself, people would wonder how the hell I did something
([I removed my examples as, in combination, they are a bit more personally
identifying than I'd like to leave, here.])

But when it came to environment, no one was willing to listen to me. I didn't
need enormous expenditure, just a simple accommodation.

When I look at so many contemporary problems, one of my first thoughts is
simply, "fix the environment".

And have some basic belief in people, that wherever they're at, they'll
actually tell you what they need. If you'll only listen.

You haven't walked a mile in their shoes. So, don't presume to tell them how
to do it.

P.S. At home, I ended up with neighbors who blasted sub-woofer car stereos
frequently and for hours on end, at times -- anytime between 8 am and 10 pm,
and sometimes at 1 am when they got home and listened to a couple of songs
while parked, before going in.

For me, this triggered a very strong "fight or flight" reaction. And, when you
are in that state -- when I am -- there is simply no access to higher-level
cognitive functions and memory. They are simply "not there".

There is no thinking yourself out of that problem, when you're in the midst of
it. There is no thinking going on, on that level.

I just saw a quote from a Martin Luther King Jr. interview (I haven't seen the
interview, yet). It ran something like:

 _You can 't expect people to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps' when
they have no boots._

People in poverty, in poor and dangerous neighborhoods, want better
neighborhoods. Better schools. Jobs.

Try giving them that. Instead of a bunch of guilt they don't really deserve,
and often already have enough of -- internalized -- on their own.

How do I know this? Through my own, different experience, where the few people
who did respect and act upon what I asked for, got much better performance out
of me.

I have no problem with people who want a noisier environment. I really
couldn't care less, and if it works for them, great! Just don't insist that it
be my environment. (Nor that I perpetually pick up their slack.)

(And, in case anyone wants to bring up "collaboration", I actually am quite
good at it. I'd end up with connections throughout multinationals having 10's
of thousands of employees. Genuine, and highly productive, connections.

I didn't need to sit next to them and work all day to tune out their phone
calls and cube meetings, in order to achieve this.)

~~~
jm__87
_For me, this triggered a very strong "fight or flight" reaction. And, when
you are in that state -- when I am -- there is simply no access to higher-
level cognitive functions and memory. They are simply "not there"_

An exercise that can help when anxiety like this hits is practicing some
mindfulness. Instead of sitting there in a loop thinking about how terrible
the thing causing your anxiety is and how you just want it to go away, try to
observe the feelings of anxiety like you're a scientist studying it instead.
Where in the body are the sensations located, what kind of sensations are
they, etc. Really try to focus on the sensations of anxiety as opposed to what
is triggering it. The goal isn't to fix the anxiety or make it go away, just
observe it and let it pass on its own. Practicing a body scan meditation daily
would likely help you prepare for your next bout of anxiety (try this one
[https://youtu.be/_DTmGtznab4](https://youtu.be/_DTmGtznab4)). Do this enough
times and hopefully that pattern that is triggering your anxiety won't have as
much of a hold on you. I've heard CBT for anxiety is also useful, though
haven't tried it myself. Good luck!

------
eigen-vector
Intellect also sharpens and stays so only if you constantly exercise it. When
you're too poor to pursue an intellectual job you end up doing menial labor
which in turn means you're not exercising your intellect. Over time that
inevitably leads to skill degradation.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
But intelligence isn't a skill, it's a capability. The most interesting
questions about it are what portion is fixed, what portion is influenced
(dictated?) by environment, and which way the causation flows for correlated
measurements. So, according to these "economists" being under financial duress
affects intellectual performance. What does this tell us about the interesting
questions? Would we be surprised to learn having cancer affects a sprinter's
performance?

~~~
segmondy
I don't think the original OP implied that intelligence is a skill, but rather
a capability like you said. Just like your capability to do physical work is
not a skill but an ability dependent on your muscles which depend on how and
how often you train em. It's the same with intelligence, if you train and
exercise your intellectual muscle (brain), your capability to do intellectual
work/exercises increases.

~~~
Andre_Wanglin
Capability and performance are distinct, IMO. Capability is what one can do,
performance is what one does do. We train to achieve as much as we are capable
of but are bound by our natural limits.

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SamReidHughes
You can read some criticism of the referenced paper here:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259207757_Comment_o...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259207757_Comment_on_Poverty_Impedes_Cognitive_Function)

------
partycoder
Intelligence is has many dimensions.

Poverty just keeps you busy trying to fulfill basic needs (like the lowest in
Maslow's hierarchy of needs) and you can't pursue more abstract goals.

Surviving while poor is not easy.

~~~
indemnity
I had a brief taste of this in 2009, to the point I was briefly homeless.

Until you have felt the ever present unease, fear for safety, and experienced
how much mental bandwidth is taken up by simply trying to survive, you won’t
understand, and it’s easy to toss off glib dismissals of people in this
situation.

In my time living in my car (already lucky that I had one to live in), I met
all types when hanging out on the street.

Labourers who had accidents and for one reason or another didn’t qualify for
disability. An architect who had designed many of the residential towers in
the CBD, but got hooked on meth and slowly squandered it all and alienated
everyone who once cared for him. People like myself who had no support network
nearby, and got the boot when the shit hit the fan in the GFC.

I lucked out in being able to get a job again as a software engineer before I
had been too many years in this situation and was still mostly presentable.

I don’t take a single day of my present life for granted, I know how little
separates me from those with a hand out on the street. We’re all a few spells
of bad luck away from it.

~~~
megaman22
I struggle to understand how broken your family relations could be that
there's no home base that you could retreat to and start over. I come from
rural New England where there is a communal network, however.I

~~~
partycoder
Some families are small, some families lose touch from geographical
distance... and you get the idea. It doesn't necessarily have to do with
personal differences.

------
andrewl
I'd never heard the term _WEIRD_ people, who are from Western, Educated,
Industrialized, Rich and Democratic countries. Interesting.

~~~
jxub
Sounds like an acronym made up to make someone feel bad about the relatively
good state of its society. Not really a fan of it.

~~~
marchenko
I think the term is meant to draw attention to the fact that most study
populations in psychology meet all of these criteria (a disproportionate
number are college students, for example) and are statistically
unrepresentative of the majority of humanity. Therefore their responses should
be interpreted/extrapolated with caution - they are demographically "weird".
It's not really intended to cast aspersions on the people themselves.

~~~
Avshalom
Yeah, I don't know if it's the origin of the phrase but College Students Are
WIERD is the popularizer.

The point being that a bunch of psychology undergrads taking surveys because
it's required of them is not necessarily a good way to draw conclusions about
the species.

------
Andre_Wanglin
>“We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental
resources, leaving less for other tasks.”

How is this not stress?

------
debunkaway726
or maybe not

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jelte_Wicherts/publicat...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jelte_Wicherts/publication/259207757_Comment_on_Poverty_Impedes_Cognitive_Function/links/02e7e538dc0586180e000000/Comment-
on-Poverty-Impedes-Cognitive-Function.pdf?origin=publication_detail)

------
whataretensors
"So take an American of average IQ: 100. Poverty, according to the estimates
from the paper that triggered this post, would knock a person back to an IQ of
87, dropping them behind roughly a third of their fellow Americans of equal
intelligence — just because they’re poor."

Another piece aimed at guilt manipulation and scare mongering for the middle
class. Don't lose your job, it will hurt your entire intelligence! Don't take
risks, you'll be full flowers for algernon if everything doesn't go perfectly.

There's a likely reality here that the biological impact of intelligence is
high and that the market selects enough for IQ that the whole measurement goes
down as some people escape poverty. Which is close to what we want btw.

------
John_KZ
If this was named "Poverty can reduce performance of a test with pretty
pictures" I'd accept it. Poverty might bring down IQ scores, but it does not
bring down intelligence.

~~~
kazinator
If lower intelligence isn't correlated with poverty, what that must mean is
that intelligence doesn't help people out of poverty.

~~~
John_KZ
Indeed most of the time it doesn't.

~~~
kazinator
But it if it does _some_ of the time, that would create a detectable offset in
the statistics. Unless it is precisely offset by an effect whereby higher
intelligence specifically contributes to poverty.

------
allthenews
Do any of these studies even acknowledge the possibility that poverty may also
select for individuals with low IQ?

How can we take these studies seriously when there is such a taboo on asking
uncomfortable questions?

------
ythn
The general case seems to be "constant stress" not poverty itself.

~~~
pjc50
> “we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We
> found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before
> harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich.”

> And here’s the kicker: “This cannot be explained by differences in time
> available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress.”

~~~
ythn
How can they make that claim? Did they have a set of rich farmers under
constant stress that did not have diminished cognitive performance? How does
one scientifically measure stress?

~~~
ItsMe000001
I repeat:

How about your own claim?

You can start with yourself, which should be much easier since if you want to
ask the person something you just have to do it in your head.

If you were even an iota as critical about your own content-free mutterings
you could make the world a better place. Seriously.

