Poverty and IQ

It’s official, poverty is harmful. According to two separate studies published in the journal Science, poverty can lower one’s IQ. Some call this a game changer because it demonstrates how the extra and constant strain of financial worries affects cognitive reasoning. Individuals then spend so much mental capacity on trying to solve these problems, they have less to use on other tasks. The studies ruled out factors like nutrition, physical exhaustion or family commitments and also tried to limit the influence of stress, all adding weight to the idea that people are poor because they are lazy or stupid as being false. Behaviors associated with poverty—using less preventive healthcare, higher obesity rates, being less attentive parents or making poor financial decisions—can now be placed in perspective, as being related to the poverty itself and not the individuals. Not only do the results hold many implications for policy makers, they provide data to help change the attitudes of many who blame the poor for being poor.