Study: Food Stamps Make You Fatter

According to a new nationwide study that appears in the recent issue of Economics and Human Biology, the U.S. Food Stamp Program may help contribute to obesity among its users.

Researchers found that the average user of food stamps had a Body Mass Index (BMI) 1.15 points higher than non-users. The link between food stamps and higher weight was almost entirely based on women users, who averaged 1.24 points higher BMI than those not in the program, the study found. For an average American woman, this would mean an increase in weight of 5.8 pounds.

The study also found that people’s BMI increased faster when they were on food stamps than when they were not, and increased more the longer they were in the program.

Study: IQ and wealth do not correlate

According to a study released by Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research,

Your IQ has really no relationship to your wealth. And being very smart does not protect you from getting into financial difficulty.

But it did confirm a relationship between IQ and income:

The results confirmed research by other scholars that show people with higher IQ scores tend to earn higher incomes. In this study, each point increase in IQ scores was associated with $202 to $616 more income per year.

This means the average income difference between a person with an IQ score in the normal range (100) and someone in the top 2 percent of society (130) is currently between $6,000 and $18,500 a year.

But when it came to total wealth and the likelihood of financial difficulties, people of below average and average intelligence did just fine when compared with the super-intelligent.