A new study shows that people in the richest 1% are less intelligent than those who earn less money, but up to a certain threshold.
- According to the researchers behind this study, there is a “ceiling of cognitive abilities” from 60,000 euros of annual income.
- The top 1% even score slightly worse on cognitive abilities than those in the income strata just below.
- The results of this study call into question the meritocracy model according to which professional and social success comes almost exclusively from effort, ability and talent.
Today, the richest 1% on the planet own almost half of the world’s wealth, according to the organization Oxfam. Recently, researchers wanted to know if the people who were the richest were also the smartest. Their work has just been published in the journal European Sociological Review.
Beyond 60,000 euros per year, the intelligence is the same
For this, the scientists studied the data of more than 59,000 Swedish men whose annual incomes and professions were very different. This information was collected during the military conscription tests that the Swedes take around 18 or 19 years old.
“We find that the relationship between abilities and salary is strong overall, but that beyond 60,000 euros (64,407 dollars) per year, abilities level off, say researchers from Linköping University, the European University Institute in Italy and the University of Amsterdam. The top 1% even score slightly worse on cognitive abilities than those in income strata just below it.”
Thus, according to scientists, there is a “ceiling of cognitive abilities” from a certain amount, 60,000 euros of annual income. In other words, among people who earn more, the level of intelligence would be the same regardless of the wage differences above 60,000 euros.
Social origin more important than merit
But for what reasons? The authors explain this by the fact that family background – or social origin – would be more important than overall intelligence. This supports the theory of Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, according to which individuals are determined by their social environment, which influences their cultural (access to culture), social (network) and economic (all the goods owned by a person).
“We find no evidence that those in top jobs that pay extraordinary salaries are more deserving [c’est-à-dire ont de meilleures capacités cognitives] than those who earn only half of these salaries”, say the authors.
Nevertheless, the authors wish that other studies on this subject be carried out because there are still limits to their current work, indeed the participants were all men, Swedish, of the same generation. “It is important to know whether our results generalize to the entire working population, they conclude. We invite further research by including women and citizens of different ethnic backgrounds.”
