So says one researcher, focused solely on financial data from 40-somethings. There is little connection between intelligence and wealth. That's according to new study out of Ohio State University's Center for Human Resource Research, which tested over 7,400 Americans for intelligence in 1980 and then went back and looked over their personal balance sheets in 2004.

People with higher than average IQs make more money than their less intelligent compatriots, the study suggest -- for each IQ point there's an income increase of between $202 and $616 a year. But, by and large, they're no better at accumulating it than those with lower IQs.

Not over yet

Viewing wealth as difference between personal assets and liabilities, the ostensibly smarter folk were likelier to have debts that nullified their advantage as earners.

"Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth," says Jay Zagorsky, author of the study and a researcher scientist at the Center for Human Resource Research. "Being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty."

Zagorsky says that other studies have made the link between IQ and income, but his study is the first to examine the relationship between intelligence, wealth and financial difficulty.

It would be interesting to see the results of a follow-up study in ten or 15 years, when the high-IQers have worked off the debt they labor under now as people in the very early stages of middle age.

By then it seems likely the higher earners might have put more distance between themselves and the lower earners in terms of overall wealth. -FWR

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