IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joepsy/v34y2013icp120-132.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-esteem, education, and wages revisited

Author

Listed:
  • de Araujo, Pedro
  • Lagos, Stephen

Abstract

Personality undoubtedly plays a role in determining educational attainment and labor market outcomes. We investigate the role of self-esteem in determining wages directly and indirectly via education. We use data from the 1979 wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79) to estimate a three equation simultaneous equation model that treats self-esteem, educational attainment, and real wages as endogenous. We find that, while self-esteem has a positive and significant impact on wages indirectly via education, it does not significantly affect wages directly once we control for locus of control. We find that the indirect effect of self-esteem comprises upwards of 80% of the total effect of self-esteem on wages after 1980. Additionally, we find that wages and education both affect self-esteem. We discuss gender differences in the relationships between wages, education, and self-esteem and conclude that females experience a higher rate of return on education than males, and self-esteem is a stronger determinant of educational attainment for males than females.

Suggested Citation

  • de Araujo, Pedro & Lagos, Stephen, 2013. "Self-esteem, education, and wages revisited," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 120-132.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:34:y:2013:i:c:p:120-132
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016748701200147X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.joep.2012.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Karsten T. & Heckman, James J. & Mullen, K.J.Kathleen J., 2004. "The effect of schooling and ability on achievement test scores," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 39-98.
    2. Margo Coleman & Thomas DeLeire, 2003. "An Economic Model of Locus of Control and the Human Capital Investment Decision," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(3).
    3. Brian A. Jacob, 2002. "Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education," NBER Working Papers 8964, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Groves, Melissa Osborne, 2005. "How important is your personality? Labor market returns to personality for women in the US and UK," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 827-841, December.
    5. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1997. "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 1-42, January.
    6. Mark Evan Edwards & Robert Plotnick & Marieka Klawitter, 2001. "Do Attitudes and Personality Characteristics Affect Socioeconomic Outcomes? The Case of Welfare Use by Young Women," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 82(4), pages 817-843, December.
    7. James J. Heckman & Jora Stixrud & Sergio Urzua, 2006. "The Effects of Cognitive and Noncognitive Abilities on Labor Market Outcomes and Social Behavior," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 411-482, July.
    8. Murnane, Richard J. & Willett, John B. & Braatz, M. Jay & Duhaldeborde, Yves, 2001. "Do different dimensions of male high school students' skills predict labor market success a decade later? Evidence from the NLSY," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 311-320, August.
    9. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863, Elsevier.
    10. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2005. "Self-Confidence and Personal Motivation," International Economic Association Series, in: Bina Agarwal & Alessandro Vercelli (ed.), Psychology, Rationality and Economic Behaviour, chapter 2, pages 19-57, Palgrave Macmillan.
    11. Deborah A. Cobb‐Clark & Stefanie Schurer, 2013. "Two Economists' Musings on the Stability of Locus of Control," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 358-400, August.
    12. Piatek, Rémi & Pinger, Pia R., 2010. "Maintaining (locus of) control? Assessing the impact of locus of control on education decisions and wages," ZEW Discussion Papers 10-093, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    13. Melissa Osborne & Herbert Gintis & Samuel Bowles, 2001. "The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1137-1176, December.
    14. Psacharopoulos, George, 1994. "Returns to investment in education: A global update," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(9), pages 1325-1343, September.
    15. Sendhil Mullainathan & Marianne Bertrand, 2001. "Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(2), pages 67-72, May.
    16. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    17. Freeman, Richard B, 1978. "Job Satisfaction as an Economic Variable," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 68(2), pages 135-141, May.
    18. Nyhus, Ellen K. & Pons, Empar, 2005. "The effects of personality on earnings," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 363-384, June.
    19. Drago, Francesco, 2011. "Self-esteem and earnings," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 480-488, June.
    20. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    21. Jacob, Brian A., 2002. "Where the boys aren't: non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 589-598, December.
    22. Glen R. Waddell, 2006. "Labor-Market Consequences of Poor Attitude and Low Self-Esteem in Youth," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(1), pages 69-97, January.
    23. Goldsmith, Arthur H. & Veum, Jonathan R. & William Darity, Jr., 1996. "The impact of labor force history on self-esteem and its component parts, anxiety, alienation and depression," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 183-220, April.
    24. Goldsmith, Arthur H & Veum, Jonathan R & Darity, William, Jr, 1997. "The Impact of Psychological and Human Capital on Wages," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(4), pages 815-829, October.
    25. Cobb-Clark, Deborah & Schurer, Stefanie, 2011. "Two economists’ musings on the stability of locus of control," Working Paper Series 1619, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    26. Feinstein, Leon, 2000. "The relative economic importance of academic, psychological and behavioural attributes developed on childhood," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20206, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Peter Hoeschler & Uschi Backes-Gellner, 2014. "Shooting for the Stars and Failing: College Dropout and Self-Esteem," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0100, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised Feb 2019.
    2. Martí­n Leites & Xavier Ramos, 2017. "The effect of relative concern on life satisfaction: Relative deprivation and loss aversion," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 17-18, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    3. Pamela Lenton, 2014. "Personality Characteristics, Educational Attainment and Wages: An Economic Analysis Using the British Cohort Study," Working Papers 2014011, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics.
    4. Chen, Weiwei & Grove, Wayne A. & Hussey, Andrew, 2017. "The role of confidence and noncognitive skills for post-baccalaureate academic and labor market outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 10-29.
    5. Leonora Risse & Lisa Farrell & Tim R L Fry, 2018. "Personality and pay: do gender gaps in confidence explain gender gaps in wages?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(4), pages 919-949.
    6. Maclean, Johanna Catherine & Hill, Terrence D., 2015. "Leaving school in an economic downturn and self-esteem across early and middle adulthood," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-12.
    7. Szabó-Morvai, Ágnes & Kiss, Hubert János, 2022. "Különböznek-e a roma és nem roma diákok nem kognitív képességeikben? [Do Roma and non-Roma students differ in their non-cognitive abilities?]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(11), pages 1433-1456.
    8. Peter Schwardmann & Joël van der Weele, 2016. "Deception and Self-Deception," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-012/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Alexander Ahammer & Mario Lackner & Jasmin Voigt, 2017. "Does Confidence Enhance Performance? Causal Evidence from Professional Biathlon," CDL Aging, Health, Labor working papers 2017-18, The Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory Aging, Health, and the Labor Market, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    10. Larsen, Vance & Carriaga, Riona & Wething, Hilary & Zhao, Jiaying & Hall, Crystal, 2023. "Behavioral consequences of income and expense shocks," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    11. Kamal, Mustafa & Blacklow, Paul, 2021. "Australian age, period, cohort effects in the gender wage gap - 2001 to 2018," Working Papers 2021-02, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics.
    12. Bahram Sanginabadi, 2020. "Does Schooling Causally Impact Non-Cognitive Skills? Evidence from Elimination of Social Security Student Benefits," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, January.
    13. Tang, Ning & Baker, Andrew, 2016. "Self-esteem, financial knowledge and financial behavior," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 164-176.
    14. Kamal, Mustafa & Blacklow, Paul, 2022. "Self-control and risk aversion in the Australian gender wage gap," Working Papers 2022-01, University of Tasmania, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics.
    15. Martín Leites & Xavier Ramos, 2022. "The Effect of Relative Income Concerns on Life Satisfaction: Relative Deprivation and Loss Aversion," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 23(7), pages 3485-3515, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Weiwei & Grove, Wayne A. & Hussey, Andrew, 2017. "The role of confidence and noncognitive skills for post-baccalaureate academic and labor market outcomes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 10-29.
    2. McGee, Andrew & McGee, Peter, 2016. "Search, effort, and locus of control," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 126(PA), pages 89-101.
    3. Maclean, Johanna Catherine & Hill, Terrence D., 2015. "Leaving school in an economic downturn and self-esteem across early and middle adulthood," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 1-12.
    4. Gensowski, Miriam, 2018. "Personality, IQ, and lifetime earnings," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 170-183.
    5. Katrin John & Stephan Thomsen, 2014. "Heterogeneous returns to personality: the role of occupational choice," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 553-592, September.
    6. Deborah Cobb-Clark, 2015. "Locus of control and the labor market," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.
    7. Peter Hoeschler & Uschi Backes-Gellner, 2014. "Shooting for the Stars and Failing: College Dropout and Self-Esteem," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0100, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW), revised Feb 2019.
    8. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2014. "The Effect Of Noncognitive Traits On Health Behaviours In Adolescence," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(9), pages 1146-1158, September.
    9. Silvia Mendolia & Ian Walker, 2015. "Youth unemployment and personality traits," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-26, December.
    10. Madhu S. Mohanty, 2019. "Role of psychological variables in the determination of the worker's wage: Further evidence from the United States," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 54-77, March.
    11. Drago, Francesco, 2011. "Self-esteem and earnings," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 480-488, June.
    12. Himmler, Oliver & Koenig, Tobias, 2012. "Self-Evaluations and Performance: Evidence from Adolescence," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-507, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    13. Heineck, Guido & Anger, Silke, 2010. "The returns to cognitive abilities and personality traits in Germany," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 535-546, June.
    14. Nikolov, Plamen & Jimi, Nusrat & Chang, Jerray, 2020. "The Importance of Cognitive Domains and the Returns to Schooling in South Africa: Evidence from Two Labor Surveys," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    15. Thiel, Hendrik & Thomsen, Stephan L., 2013. "Noncognitive skills in economics: Models, measurement, and empirical evidence," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 189-214.
    16. Humphries, John Eric & Kosse, Fabian, 2017. "On the interpretation of non-cognitive skills – What is being measured and why it matters," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 174-185.
    17. Emilia Bedyk & Jacek Liwiński, 2016. "The wage premium from parents’ investments in the education of their children in Poland," Working Papers 2016-14, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    18. Nils Braakmann, 2009. "The Role of Psychological Traits for the Gender Gap in Full-Time Employment and Wages: Evidence from Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 162, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    19. Рожкова К. В. & Рощин С. Ю., 2021. "Влияние Некогнитивных Характеристик На Выбор Траекторий В Высшем Образовании: Взгляд Экономистов," Вопросы образования // Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 3, pages 138-167.
    20. Glewwe, Paul & Huang, Qiuqiong & Park, Albert, 2017. "Cognitive skills, noncognitive skills, and school-to-work transitions in rural China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 141-164.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Self-esteem; Determinants of wages; Simultaneous equation model; Gender inequality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:34:y:2013:i:c:p:120-132. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/joep .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.