High IQ in Early Adolescence and Career Success in Adulthood: Findings from a Swedish Longitudinal Study

To what extent do intellectually talented adolescents pursue educational and vocational careers that match their intellectual resources? Career outcomes were compared between groups within different IQ ranges with a focus on comparing those with high IQ (top 10%, IQ > 119) to those with average IQ. Data were analyzed from the longitudinal Swedish IDA study (N = 1,326) with career outcomes measured in midlife (age 43-47). To obtain at least a master's degree was almost 10 times more common for those of high IQ than for those of average IQ. Still, the proportion of high-IQ adolescents who did this was not high (13% of females, 34% of males) and as much as 20% of them did not even graduate from 3-year high school. For men only, there was a graded raise in income by IQ group. Within the high-IQ group there was no significant relationship between parents' socioeconomic status and income. For men, high IQ predicted a strongly increased income/vocational level in midlife beyond what was predicted from a linear model of the IQ-outcome relationship.