"So take an American of average IQ: 100. Poverty, according to the estimates from the paper that triggered this post, would knock a person back to an IQ of 87,

"So take an American of average IQ: 100. Poverty, according to the estimates from the paper that triggered this post, would knock a person back to an IQ of 87, dropping them behind roughly a third of their fellow Americans of equal intelligence — just because they’re poor." Another piece aimed at guilt manipulation and scare mongering for the middle class. Don't lose your job, it will hurt your entire intelligence! Don't take risks, you'll be full flowers for algernon if everything doesn't go perfectly. There's a likely reality here that the biological impact of intelligence is high and that the market selects enough for IQ that the whole measurement goes down as some people escape poverty. Which is close to what we want btw.