Round-up: How accurate is self-assessed IQ?

The most interesting articles that came to our attention this week

Is There a Foster Care-To-Prison Pipeline? Evidence from Quasi-Randomly Assigned Investigators. Jason Baron and Max Gross examine whether the association between growing up in foster care and subsequent criminal involvement is causal. By comparing children who were placed in foster care versus those who were allowed to remain with their parents, they find that placement actually reduces the risk of subsequent criminal involvement.

Age and Cognitive Ability. Aaron Dymarskiy reviews the literature on the relationship between cognitive ability and age. Focussing on longitudinal studies, which track the same individuals over the course of their lives, he concludes that both fluid and crystallized intelligence continue to increase until around age 50, and do not start to decrease rapidly until age 70. Hence the average 70-year-old is smarter than the average 20-year-old.