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pianoforte611 comments on Experiences in applying "The Biodeterminist's Guide to Parenting" - Less Wrong Discussion
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This seems horrifically subject to Goodhart's law and confounding. Even if it is true that one IQ point is associated with a $1600 increase in salary, controlling for a variety of confounders, it is not the case that an intervention resulting a one point increase in IQ will have the same effect on salary.
Even if the intervention results in a true increase in IQ of one point that doesn't fade (a problem with many interventions), and even if a perfect analysis was done such that an increase in salary of $1600 was caused by, and not just associated with the one point rise in IQ, it is still not the case that the intervention will result in the same $1600 increase in salary.
By "save" I meant "avoid losing" not "gain an extra." Assuming a child would not normally get mercury poisoning, for example, by preventing mercury exposure I am preventing my child from losing some amount of cognitive ability.
My guess is that interventions like preschool are more likely to fade with time, and brain damage is less likely to fade.
I'm not taking Salkever's numbers literally. But you probably agree that brain damage causes lost value, possibly a lot of lost value. I estimate that I may spend a few thousand dollars on various steps to prevent brain damage to my children. That seems like a good investment to me.
I apologize, I see you clearly brought up IQ in the context of preventing poisoning. That should have a more predictable effect than positive interventions.