Christopher Eppig, a grad student in
New Mexico posts on Sep6 2011 in
SciAm "
Why Is Average IQ Higher in Some Places". His
research finds:
"[...] we not only found a very strong relationship between levels of infectious disease and IQ, but controlling for the effects of education, national wealth, temperature, and distance from sub-Saharan Africa, infectious disease emerged as the best predictor of the bunch."
The gist of this is because of lack of fuel for the developing brain:
"One study found that newborn humans spend close to 90 percent of their calories on building and running their brains. (Even as adults, our brains consume as much as a quarter of our energy.) If, during childhood, when the brain is being built, some unexpected energy cost comes along, the brain will suffer."
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