It’s official: billionaires aren’t the brainboxes they like to believe | Arwa Mahdawi

The obscene wealth of many CEOs is less a result of intelligence and more down to luck, background and personality

Money may be able to buy you happiness, but it can't buy you brains. A study published in January found that billionaires aren't any smarter than the rest of us - indeed, those in the top 1% of earners scored lower on cognitive ability tests than those who earned slightly less.

This is according to researchers who analysed data from 59,000 Swedish men, then tracked their lives for more than a decade. They found a strong connection between how smart someone was and how much they earned - until they reached a salary of 600,000 kronor (46,700) a year. After that, factors such as luck, background and personality became more important.