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<p>That would not be valid. Correlations describe trends in populations, not the potential of any given individual within the population. And all populations of reasonable size contain outliers. It cannot be concluded from an overall population correlation that any specific outlier “would have been” an even greater outlier had the correlating factor (this case lack of money) not existed. You just don’t know.</p>
<p>In other words, the correlation between wealth and SAT scores suggests (but does not prove) that providing more money to poor people will raise the overall or average SAT scores for that group, but it tells you nothing about what will happen to any given individual within that population</p>