Study: Rich people tend to be smarter

But a new study offers a different view. Jonathan Wai, a research scientist at Duke University and part of the school’s Talent Identification Program, looked at the world’s billionaires and global elite. He found that billionaires are, as a group, very highly educated and have high cognitive abilities. About a third of the world’s billionaires attended elite schools worldwide.

Even among billionaires, the billionaires with higher wealth were more likely to have gone to a top college.

“The average net worth of those that attended an elite school was significantly higher than those who did not,” the report said.

The global elite—defined by media lists and culled from the attendees of the annual World Economic Forum gathering at Davos, Switzerland—are also highly educated. More than half of Davos attendees went to elite colleges, Wai found.