[Cincinatus' Wife]

This is another liberal academic study designed to push public policy.

It's Big Education, hand in hand, with Big Government and Big Journalism.

Read the short piece in full, because it takes a swerve at the end that pretty much rewrites what this implies in the beginning. Which makes it the perfect academic tool for social activists to quote (w/o the academic losing their credibility).

But it still will be used to make the oft repeated claim that income/home address is the REAL social discrimination that needs to be given the "social justice" treatment.

So, if we transfer more money to the poor from the wealthy, brains will grow? If we move them into affluent neighborhoods, children will have proper parents who will feed them and read to them? This will be the rallying cry - the class warfare the Left will employ.

Being poor, doesn't prevent you from reading to your children, putting healthy food on their plates, disciplining them, pushing them to do better - anymore than being poor makes you break the law, have a dirty home, be immoral or speak unintelligibly.

Big Government's generational nurturing of special interest groups, tied to their demand for their loyalty and vote, is what has destroyed the family and harmed children.

[Cowboy Bob]

Having a small brain in genetic. Small brained people are stupid, which is why they are poor. People who have small brains tend to mate with others who have small brains...and they produce small brained children.

It’s all rather quite simple.

The only exception is when these small brained people can play sports or sing rap music. Then they can earn lots of money. But in the end they usually lose it all and go bankrupt.

[American in Israel]

Another twist is that families in lower income social levels are all on socialized medicine, families in hundred fifty thousand plus social level are on private medicine. How does that make a difference? The rate of immunization in children on social medicine is near 100%, the rate of immunization with vaccines is much less on people with private medicine. In fact the lowest rate of vacine injection is in white upper class families, alone with the loweat autosm rates.

I would love to see a study directly relating these issues.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Another study showed that illegal aliens tend to be low in intelligence, after which liberals screamed “racism” like they always do. But it just so happens that illegal aliens tend to be poor, and poor people tend to be stupid. Life is full of uncomfortable facts.

[driftdiver]

IMO it’s more about eventually eliminating democracy and formalizing the elite ruling class. Because they are naturally better, smarter, stronger. Same thing was done against the Jewish people in the 1920 and 1930s.

[Leep]

So my ‘pea brain” and leftism theory is correct?

[nathanbedford]

"Charles Murray, the conservative author of the discredited book The Bell Curve, from basically telling The Washington Post that the gaps must the result of genetic inheritance:

"It is confidently known that brain size is correlated with IQ, IQ measured in childhood is correlated with income as an adult, and parental IQ is correlated with children’s IQ,” Murray wrote in an e-mail. “I would be astonished if children’s brain size were NOT correlated with parental income. How could it be otherwise?" That there is what one calls irresponsible science commentary."

Poor Charles Murray, he had to learn the hard way that science has no business getting in the way of political correctness.

[dp0622]

Excellent post. Now these people MUST get violent if they need to because their children have SMALLER BRAINS!! This is life or death!! Attack the wealthy if need be!!
what garbage. That mom is a crack addict/heroin addict/methadone addict/(insert drug here) has nothing to do with it.
And the fact that they are not read to, or encouraged to learn has nothing to do with it either.

[cripplecreek]

It tells us that poor nutrition and lack of stimulation lead to smaller brains.

It probably means more today than it did in the past.

[ThePatriotsFlag]

I call BS ,,,”may have?”

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Exposure to various environmental residuals? Tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana could be more prevalent in the environment of a poor child, at least in the living conditions that the child is directly in contact with at a very young age.

[Savage Beast]

" affluent mothers and fathers have more intensive parenting styles—they're more likely to read to their kids, for instance—and have enough money to make sure their toddlers grow up well-nourished, generally cared for, and intellectually stimulated."

Damn right! I was from a very poor family, but my parents let me know that I had damn sure better be at the top of the class. They read to me, helped me with my homework, and--of utmost importance--made it clear that I was EXPECTED to be at the top!

In the second grade, there were three reading groups: the blue birds, the green birds, and the red birds. I figured them out: the blue birds were the best readers, the red birds the worst. I was in the green birds. I knew I'd better get myself in the blue birds! I did. My first day as a blue bird, the teacher told me to read "to the end of the next paragraph". I had no idea what a paragraph was--but I figured it out fast, and she never knew. I made sure I was one of the top readers! I knew I'd better!

When I took an I.Q. test as a teenager, I scored off the board--way up in the stratospheric genius level.

[Savage Beast]

What you say is absolutely right, CW; however, parents like you and me will always take good care of their children, and, for that reason, their children will always have advantages.

[arthurus]

Rich people tend to be, among those who made themselves rich at least, smarter than the average. That's how they got rich. Once rich they educate their children who, coincidentally, share their genes and start out on average smarter than others, in better schools. The children tend to marry others who come from successful families. What is so mysterious? Maybe it is all a conspiracy and rich children should be required to marry low IQ mates or to be homosexual so as not to pass on the genes for intelligence.

In a stratified society in which entry into the market is tightly controlled this all tends to concentrate the brains and, of course, the power at the top and to keep the lower classes stupid. In a totally free market society the circulation keeps the intelligence much more evenly distributed as the rich progeny who have not the entrepreneurial spirit lose the wealth of their parents and sparks among the less affluent flash to the top.

[TexasCajun]

More like Consumer/Non-Producers pass down, generation after generation, a small relative inactive brain that only requires knowledge to reproduce & a collect welfare check.

[trebb]

Evidently, reliance on welfare makes one stupid.....

[C210N]

This study can be used to make a huge leap in income inequality. So, poor children have smaller brains. What does that tell us? That the war on poverty was ALL wrong. We need to channel a new war and money to support it, to find brain foods to make the poor have bigger brains. Then, we will all be rich!

[P.O.E.]

I call BS. I know plenty of poor people who are perceptive, bright, polite, etc.

And plenty of rich people who are purblind, reactionary, rude, etc.

[IronJack]

This sounds like a good reason to discourage poor people from having children. Instead, our worthless government pays them to do just that.

Cloward-Piven anybody?

[TexasFreeper2009]

Yes, it tells you the poor kids parents also had smaller brains.

Do these idiots actually get paid for these studies?

[exDemMom]

So, if we transfer more money to the poor from the wealthy, brains will grow? If we move them into affluent neighborhoods, children will have proper parents who will feed them and read to them?

That could become the liberal rallying cry, but none of that will work (because liberals only want to treat symptoms, not causes).

As someone pointed out in an earlier post, children are born with the genetically programmed potential to reach a certain IQ. But it takes a good environment to optimize brain development so that it reaches its maximum possible IQ.

There are three factors that must be optimized: nutrition, intellectual stimulation, and overall health.

The role of nutrition is to ensure that the body has sufficient raw material to support maximal brain growth. I remember reading a study done on starving kids in Africa; one group of kids received a nutritious diet containing all of the food groups. The other group received the same diet, but without meat (the calories were replaced by oil). After a period of time, the kids eating the complete diet had, on average, IQ scores 6 points higher than the kids on the meat-free diet. This deficit is not likely to be reversed by giving the vegetarian kids meat, since the IQ deficit reflects stunted brain development at a time when the brain is in a crucial growth phase.

The role of intellectual stimulation is to encourage full growth of the parts of the brain involved with reasoning. The brain is a lot like a muscle: areas that are not stimulated tend to not develop. Animal studies show, for example, that depriving an infant animal of sight in one eye causes irreversible developmental aberrations in the visual cortex. This phenomenon is the basis of eye patch treatment for young children exhibiting lazy eye: as long as the condition is caught early enough, an eye patch can train the weak eye to see. But older children do not benefit from such treatment. Once a certain level of maturity is reached, those early deficits of stimulation can never be reversed.

Overall health plays a role, too. Infectious disease is one of the biggest threats to overall health--a child who is sick all the time puts their nutritional resources towards surviving the illness. The same goes for serious injury. So, in that respect, infectious disease or serious injury is similar to nutritional deficiency. Also, many diseases damage the brain. Anything that causes a high fever is potentially brain damaging; some diseases attack the brain specifically. Measles can cause permanent brain damage; meningitis is very likely to cause brain damage. By protecting a kid against disease and injury, the child's body can put all of the resources into proper brain development.

Clearly, all of those factors are magnified in extremely poor families. While poor people can and do provide their kids with the best nutrition, health care, and intellectual stimulation possible within their means, other poor people do not. Within the "poverty culture", as I call it, there are a lot of negative influences on children's proper neurological development. As long as that culture is not addressed, none of the other factors are going to change--because those indoctrinated into that culture will resist being taught about nutrition, intellectually engaging children, and maintaining health--and the poor will remain poor.