The causation arguably goes in the other direction too. You can't make money if you're unhealthy at baseline. Nor can you as easily acquire more education or new skills.

Yeah. Which is why I'm personally huge on paying plenty of taxes and having lots of social systems. If someone's time is spent fulfilling basic needs, it will take generations for them to get out of that.

I think part of what you’re qualifying as “and yet...” may be exactly what GP is talking about. They worry less and get on with things, comfortable that they can, rather than harming themselves with 1000 “economical” cuts. See too the boot metaphor[0] that is a real impediment to getting to somewhere comfortable. There’s a potential tipping-point that’s personal to each person.

[0] https://moneywise.com/a/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfair...

It's very likely that since IQ comes from good Gene's, that a least some of the effect is the other way around ; you make more because you are more intelligent, and you're more intelligent in part due to better genetic qualities. a huge part of having average IQ is just being healthy enough to get there.