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Yvain comments on Cascio in The Atlantic, more on cognitive enhancement as existential risk mitigation - Less Wrong
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Really, really, really doubtful that correlations between national IQ and, well, anything prove anything besides that certain countries are generally better off than others. That correlation is probably just differentiating First World countries from Third World countries in general - the First World has better health and education, and also better government. Although I'm agnostic on the existence of racial IQ differences, those aren't what's going on here, considering the wide variation in success of countries with similar races.
Same with IQ versus religion within and between countries: it's probably just an artifact of religion vs. wealth correlations. I scanned those articles and I didn't see anything saying they'd adjusted for it; if there is, then I'll start getting excited.
The national/regional IQ literature is messy, because there are so many possible (and even likely) feedback loops between wealth, schooling, nutrition, IQ and GDP. Not to mention the rather emotional views of many people on the topic, as well as the lousy quality of some popular datasets. Lots of clever statistical methods have been used, and IQ seems to retain a fair chunk of explanatory weight even after other factors have been taken into account. Some papers have even looked at staggered data to see if IQ works as a predictor of future good effects, which it apparently does.
Whether it would be best to improve IQ, health or wealth directly depends not just on which has the biggest effect, but also on how easy it is and how the feedbacks work.
Or intelligent people are just better at getting wealthy.