arcelonious on 16 September 2013
The research mentioned in the article is still only measuring correlation, so the claim that "poverty is making people dumber" is unfortunately not founded on a causal link (due to no actual manipulation of any variables, outside of simply taking tests at different bill amounts). Since causation wasn't tested, there is no way to conclude whether poverty caused a reduction in intelligence, lack of intelligence caused poverty, or some other variable not mentioned.
It's obvious that socioeconomic status and intelligence are correlated, but there are many potential variables at work here.
