It's not easy being smart

Being smart doesn't necessarily make you good at stuff. Smart people are better than other people at some stuff, but academic intelligence, of the sort measured by IQ test, isn't necessarily a good indicator of overall life success. Most smart people already know this (especially those who are smart and broke), but it has been supported by recent research which found that smarter people do not have a higher net worth .

The research found that "each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year," presumably over those who have an average (i.e., 100) IQ. This meant that the "median net worth for people with an IQ of 120 was almost $128,000 compared with $58,000 for those with an IQ of 100". (All values in US dollars.)

But the situation changes substantially when other life factors are considered.

But when Zagorsky controlled for other factors – such as divorce, years spent in school, type of work and inheritance – he found no link between IQ and net worth. In fact, people with a slightly above-average IQ of 105 , had an average net worth higher than those who were just a bit smarter, with a score of 110.

Most of these differences are thought to be due to divorce and smoking, which resulted in decreased net worth of $9,600 and $11,000 respectively. Also smart people are more conspicuous consumers, because they have higher expectations about their lifestyle (although this is probably more true in the US than in Australia, it probably isn't untrue for equivalent Australians). They earn more, but they spend more, and are more likely to have maxed out credit cards, according to the research.

I'm not sure where the divorce thing comes from, but I know plenty of academically smart people who have been divorced, most of whom experienced negative financial consequences. If we equate intelligence with "professional" occupations and a university education (not universally true, but a useful proxy), smart people are more likely to get married later, in my experience (because they defer such things until after they have finished their education). I would have thought that people who got married earlier were more likely to divorce, but maybe smart people have higher expectations about how a relationship should work, and greater access to information and resources for getting themselves out of those relationships.

I can't say that the smoking thing surprises me. Smart people are supposed to know about the dangers of smoking, but in my experience, those who should be most aware of the dangers of smoking, medical doctors, are heavy smokers (and users of all sorts of other drugs). I've known lots of medical doctors, and they're about the unhealthiest people I know.

Whilst we shouldn't necessarily equate intelligence to educational attainment, of my own personal acquaintances who are in the thirties, those who have doctorates are certainly not better off. The richest ones are those who got a degree in something like accounting or marketing in three or four years and then headed out into the workforce. They're the ones who own houses and stock portfolios and nice cars. I actually think that if you eliminated those of us with doctorates, who spent a decade or more at university, from the calculations, the smart folk would probably be averaging much better – We're definitely letting the team down!