Poverty's Role in Intellectual Development
By Eric Jaffe,
City Lab
| 12. 18. 2015
Untitled Document
Whether intelligence is more the product of nature or nurture has long fascinated American social scientists and the general public alike. Typically the result is explained as some balance of genetics and environment, but since the early 1970s, researchers have noticed that this scale tends to shift dramatically across social classes. It’s as if nature and nurture play by different rules for rich and poor.
Generally speaking this work has found that genetic variance tends to explain the bulk of IQ scores for advantaged groups, whereas environmental variance plays a larger role for disadvantaged ones. (This line of research draws its results from comparative analyses of identical twins, who share a complete genetic makeup, and fraternal twins or siblings.) In other words, when it comes to intelligence, a comfortable upbringing seems to help nature reach its potential, but an impoverished one seems to interfere at every turn.
Still, other studies have failed to confirm these findings, enough so that scholars continue to wonder. But a strong new analysis published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that the role...
Related Articles
GeneWatch UK has prepared a briefing on the genetic modification of nature for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress in October 2025
The upcoming Congress claims to be “where the world comes together to set priorities and drive conservation and sustainable development action.” A major concern for those on the outside is that the Congress may advance plans to develop and encourage the use of synthetic biology in nature conservation. This could at first glance sound like...
By Peter de Kruijff, ABC News | 09.16.2025
Do you wonder where your meat comes from? Maybe it is organic, wild harvested, or farmed.
Or perhaps it was designed in a lab.
Faster-growing fish, heat-tolerant cows and disease-resistant pigs are among a new class of animals that are...
By Staff, GMWatch | 08.10.2025
Protesting Against Monsanto and GMOs
by William Murphy, CC2.0
GMWatch has published a series of interviews with the late scientist Dr Arpad Pusztai, conducted in March 2002 by the journalist Andy Rowell, as part of his research for his book, Don't...
By Ewen Callaway, Nature | 08.04.2025
For months, researchers in a laboratory in Dallas, Texas, worked in secrecy, culturing grey-wolf blood cells and altering the DNA within. The scientists then plucked nuclei from these gene-edited cells and injected them into egg cells from a domestic dog ...