One social phenomenon that is hard to ignore is that wealth and health tend to go hand in hand. Those with more money often enjoy better health, and conventional wisdom says that this is mainly, or only, because in our society, those with more money have better access to healthcare. But one researcher is suggesting that intelligence is the third factor that is connected to both wealth and health:
In two recent scientific papers, researcher Linda Gottfredson proposes that rather than poverty causing ill health (and, generally, lower IQ scores) among lower social classes, intelligence disparities may underlie class differences both in wealth and health.
Consider a person's income, or job, or education – all signposts of a person's status and wealth. The more tightly such a factor is related to intelligence, Dr. Gottfredson says, the more tightly it is also related to health...the lower the social class, the higher the proportion of people with limited learning, literacy and problem-solving skills...
Regarding health, general intelligence may be a major cause of that difference, she contends. While so far it's unproven, "I think it's a stronger candidate than anything else that's been produced so far."
Her theories about this are fascinating:
Dr. Gottfredson, however, sees abundant evidence suggesting that intelligence differences may explain the puzzling gap – which exists, she notes, across different time periods, nations, health-care systems and even diseases. For instance, she says, the higher people are on the socioeconomic ladder, the higher they tend to score on tests of general intelligence, or g – a mental agility that includes skills such as reasoning and learning in all sorts of situations.
Dr. Gottfredson argues that taking care of one's health can be viewed as an increasingly complex, lifelong job...Even if all patients had the same medical care and resources, some would exploit them better than others to guard their health, she says. "The reason is that people differ in their ability to learn information, to understand the information that's provided to them, and their inclination and ability to go seek out information, understand what's relevant," she says.
In other words, even if people with little money had unlimited access to healthcare, they would still be limited to the degree that low intelligence lowered their ability to navigate the health-care system, decide how to best care for themselves, make judgments about health-care issues, and create a lifelong plan for good health. Those with higher intelligence may be more likely to work at less-risky jobs, but they're also more likely to quit smoking. And regular observers of shows like Cops have always known there's a link between intelligence and accident prevention. (Joanne Jacobs provides a link to a prime example of bad health being directly attibutable to stupid decisions. Money may cover healthcare costs in this case, but it certainly won't stop someone from making this kind of decision in the future.)
Throwing more money at the problem isn't necessarily the solution. And when one study has shown that forty-two percent of patients surveyed didn't understand the directions for taking medication on an empty stomach, the suggestion that "health literacy" is as connected to intelligence as "reading literacy" makes sense.
Read the entire article - there's more data to suggest a link between intelligence and health, an explanation of the "correlation does not mean causation" concept (hoorah!), and a few suggestions, included changing the health care structure so that doctors would have more information about patient intelligence before giving medications and creating healthcare plans.
Posted by kswygert at March 17, 2004 12:46 PM