Brains Over Brawn

I found this from the Harvard Business Review Daily Stat. Not a real leap of deductive reasoning which states on average, the higher the IQ, the more money you make. However, what I found very interesting here was the quantification of this study. If we can increase the IQ of the top 5% by 1 point, per capita GDP goes up $468. Wow, I love metrics like this. I often use the quote of you can have your own opinions but not your own facts. Just imagine what we could do if we were able to increase the IQ of our elected officials even ½ point? But that is fodder for another blog entry.

There are other statistics in this report as well. As one who firmly believes in continued education and keep pushing the mental envelope, this is great to see. I would emphasize in this stressed times, others will look to education and revitalization of the mind as way for all of us to work our way out of the economic mess we have created for ourselves. All ships rise on high tide, the more we all learn and enhance our own cognitive skills, it will raise the level of our society. In the last few years I have attained my MBA degree and PMP certification. It's never too late to start, and with tempests that we live in, you can never be too prepared.

OK, here's an update. No sooner do I post this thought, then another item came in once again from the HBR Daily Stat:

Schooling Increases Your IQ Year by Year

School not only gives students specific skills, it also increases their intelligence. One year of formal schooling between age 10 and 20 raises an individual's IQ score by 2.9 to 3.5 points, on average, say Torberg Falch of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Sofia Sandgren Massih of Uppsala University in Sweden. So 4 to 5 additional years of schooling increases IQ scores by about one standard deviation, a sizable effect, the authors say.

Source: The Effect of Education on Cognitive Ability http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1874548

This also means we have do everything we can to keep improving our education system and support our institutions of higher education. Keep this in mind when we think about paying for the past by cutting too much of the future.