On Nov 10, 4:02 pm, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
Does anyone know of any good articles/studies on how well IQ scores in
childhood correlate with success in adulthood, given all the inherent
inaccuracies of the tests? I realise this is a pretty broad topic, but
I know there are some well-informed people here, and the subject has
come up for discussion on someone's blog so I'm interested in finding
out more.

The book "The Bell Curve" (1994) by Herrnstein and Murray covers this,
using data from National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market
Experience of Youth (in the U.S.). They define 5 cognitive classes
corresponding to IQ percentiles:
(1) very bright -- top 5% -- 125+ IQ
(2) bright -- 75-95% -- 110-125 IQ
(3) normal -- 25-75% -- 90-110 IQ
(4) dull -- 5-25% -- 75-90 IQ
(5) very dull -- bottom 5% -- below 75 IQ

Here are the percentages of whites in various IQ groups meeting
certain conditions:

p132 living in
poverty:
2 3 6 16 30
p146 failure to get a HS
diploma: 0 0 6 35
55
p158 more than 1mo out of year not employed (males):
10 14 15 19 22
p161 disability preventing employment
(males): 0 0.5 0.5 3.6 7.8
p163 unemployed more than 1mo out of year
(males): 2 7 7 10 12
p174 divorced in first 5 years of
marriage: 9 15 23 22 21
p180 gave birth to illegitimate baby
(females): 2 4 8 17 32
p194 welfare dependence with 1 year of becoming mother (females): 1 4
12 21 55

For example, only 2% of very bright but 30% of very dull whites live
in poverty.

Cognitive test scores are better predictor of job performance than any
other single measure, according to a meta-analysis (p81):

The Validity of Some Different Predictors of Job Performance
Predictor Validity Predicting Job Performance
Ratings
cognitive test score 0.53
biographical data 0.37
reference checks 0.26
education 0.22
interview 0.14
college grades 0.11
interest 0.10
age -0.01