So while yes, I agree that higher average intelligence equates to higher average income, the point is we're talking about outliers here... and a group that is poorly studied, IMO.
The highest IQ group represented here is 125 and up, but most people put the threshold for gifted at 130 (assuming 15 SD scale), and the range for "optimal intelligence" at around 120-145 on the same scale. These numbers would mostly represent the optimal intelligence group, including many members below what we would term "gifted." So these numbers aren't really useful for our purposes.
Yes, I agree here.
Just read this in the Methods section of the paper: the study didn't report income accurately. If a subject was married, family income was divided by 2. So if I had been in that study, my income would have been inflated and if my husband had been in it, his would have been cut by a lot. Without knowing about income differences or similarities in a marriage, it's basically not possible to report income-by-IQ accurately.
This brings me to something I was thinking about during lunch. People with high IQs and a lot of education have many more options than people with little education and average or below-average IQs.
I think we have a number of people on this board who are examples of this idea. Specifically, a lot of people here can afford to be one-income families. I suspect that this is an easier option for educated people. This option isn't available to a lot of people who aren't educated. In my situation, I was able to turn down a highly paid job last year in favor of a low-paid job. The lucrative position would have made my brain rot. The low-paid job runs on funding I have but is really, really interesting, and I can even afford to hire an RA.
