[schoper]

No it doesn't. I've been poor. There is no 1 standard deviation IQ penalty.

"The finding further undercuts the theory that poor people, through inherent weakness, are responsible for their own poverty..."

Again, no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations on average. This is usually IQ, but will often be something like physical disability (ie., blindness), ugliness, or poor socialization, inherent or learned. This does not mean that it is all right to construct a society without full employment or universal healthcare. But if people trying to help the poor continue to be taken in by the above belief, they are never going to get anywhere.

[angersock]

Whoa, slow down there chief.

"Poor" can also encompass all the nice middle-class folks who are heavily leveraged in assets, with credit-card debt and student loans and mortgages and the like.

We're not just talking about Crazy Joe Hobo.

[DanBC]

> > are responsible for their own poverty...

> no. The poorer members of our society have more limitations [...] like physical disability.

I hope I haven't mangled your words too badly. But I'm a bit confused - are you saying that people are responsible for being blind and thus are responsible for being poor?

[schoper]

It's not a moral calculus, Dan.

[JanneVee]

So you as an anecdote trumps multiple people in the sample for the research?

[mason240]

It's funny how anecdotes in a comment section that support an article's premise are always upvoted/supported, but any anecdote that runs counter to it is always met with a hostile reaction.

[dllthomas]

Really, provided the article is well founded, comments that support it are doing a service to the readers and those that don't are doing a disservice (if they are giving people the sense they are typical). People respond to stories.

The problem, of course, is that anecdotes will exist on both sides of just about any issue, so they should be viewed with skepticism when trying to convince in the first place...

[JanneVee]

Do you have any statistics? I've seen cases where an article's premise has been taken apart with anecdotes and people upvote/support those also. Not often but I've seen it happen.

[brador]

Also location, network, lack of friends and family support, mental illness, pressure from peers to conform to a low standard...