Or, to say it another way, correlation does not equal causation. This is a fundamental concept anyone who works in research or otherwise technical fields understands, but lay people so often do not.

As with most things involving children, look at parents. Stupid parents tend to have stupid kids, stupid parents also tend to have low paying jobs or no job. Stupid parents also tend to not put in good parenting time with their kids. So the children of stupid parents suffer because they get the short end of the stick genetics wise (the nature part of intelligence) and they also tend to get poor parenting (the nuture part of intelligence).

This doesn’t correlate directly to money though, teachers tend to have smart children, and teachers aren’t paid a whole lot. Additionally every once in awhile you’ll have a smart, disciplined, and responsible person who has been dealt a bad hand and so maybe they’re poor, but they pass on good traits to their kids and engage in proactive parenting and their kinds turn out great and end up being doctors and lawyers and whatnot.

On the same token money doesn’t make people smart, see celebrities, Plaxico Burress, etc.

Lack of money doesn’t make people stupid, and money doesn’t make people smart. Rather, on balance, smart and disciplined people make more money than stupid and lazy people, and they pass on their intelligence and or work ethic to their children.

It isn’t poverty, it is parenting.

So if you deny the poor food stamps or rent subsidies, you are actually denying them health care.

If poverty caused brain damage, we never would have evolved.