Struggle to make ends meet can affect IQ:
Study
WASHINGTON - Being short
on cash may make you a bit slower in the brain, a new study
suggests.
Researchers in the study, published in the US
journal Science, concluded that poverty consumed so much mental
energy that people struggling to make ends meet often have little
brain power left for anything else, leaving them more susceptible
to bad decisions.
People worrying about having enough money to pay
their bills tend to lose temporarily the equivalent of 13 IQ
points, scientists found when they gave intelligence tests to
shoppers at a New Jersey mall and farmers in India.
The idea is that financial stress monopolises
thinking, making other calculations slower and more difficult, a
bit like the effects of going without sleep for a night.
"Our paper isn't about poverty. It's about people
struggling to make ends meet," said Professor Sendhil Mullainathan,
a Harvard economist and study co-author. "When we think about
people who are financially stressed, we think they are short on
money, but the truth is they are also short on cognitive
capacity."
If you are always thinking about overdue bills, a
mortgage or rent, or college loans, it takes away from your focus
on other things. So being late on loans could end up costing you
both interest points and IQ points, Professor Mullainathan
said.
In the New Jersey part of the study, the researchers
tested about 400 shoppers, presenting scenarios involving a large
and a small car repair bill. Those with annual family incomes of
about US$20,000 (S$25,500) scored about the same as those with
US$70,000 incomes on IQ tests when the bill was small. But when
poorer people had to think about a huge repair bill, their IQ
scores were 40 per cent lower.
Then the researchers looked at real life in the
fields of India, where farmers get paid only once a year. Before
the harvest, they take loans and pawn goods. After they sell their
harvest, they are flush with cash.
The researchers tested the same 464 farmers before
and after the harvest and their IQ scores improved by 25 per cent
when their wallets fattened.
"For a long time, we've been blaming the poor for
their own failings," said study co-author Jiaying Zhao, a professor
of psychology at the University of British Columbia. "We're arguing
something very different."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
World, The Straits Times, Saturday, August 31, 2013, pg A36