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Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period and Cohort Effects

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  • Bernd Fitzenberger
  • Gary Mena
  • Jan Nimczik
  • Uwe Sunde

Abstract

Economists increasingly recognise the importance of personality traits for socio-economic outcomes, but little is known about the stability of these traits over the life cycle. Existing empirical contributions typically focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period influences. This paper contributes novel evidence for the separability of age, period and cohort effects for a broad range of personality traits based on systematic specification tests for disentangling age, period and cohort influences. Our estimates document that, for different cohorts, the evolution of personality traits across the life cycle follows a stable, though non-constant, age profile, while there are sizeable differences across time periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernd Fitzenberger & Gary Mena & Jan Nimczik & Uwe Sunde, 2022. "Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period and Cohort Effects," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(646), pages 2141-2172.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:132:y:2022:i:646:p:2141-2172.
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    1. Andrew E Clark & Rong Zhu, 2024. "Taking Back Control? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Retirement on Locus of Control," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1465-1493.
    2. Gast'on P. Fern'andez, 2023. "Does personality affect the allocation of resources within households?," Papers 2307.02918, arXiv.org.
    3. Haylock, Michael & Kampkötter, Patrick & Kosfeld, Michael & Von Siemens, Ferdinand, 2023. "Helping and Antisocial Behavior in the Workplace," CEPR Discussion Papers 18154, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Sunde, Uwe, 2023. "Age, longevity, and preferences," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    5. Kemper, Johanna & Renold, Ursula, 2024. "Evaluating the impact of general versus vocational education on labor market outcomes in Egypt by means of a regression discontinuity design," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    6. Sunde, Uwe & Kotschy, Rainer, 2022. "Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17624, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Murray, Neil & Neyse, Levent & Schröder, Carsten, 2023. "Changes in risk attitudes vary across domains throughout the life course," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 534-563.
    8. McKercher, Bob, 2023. "Age or generation? Understanding behaviour differences," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    9. Md Tawhidul Islam & Kenta Tanaka & Koji Kotani, 2024. "Sharing information and threshold ambiguity in public bads prevention," Working Papers SDES-2024-3, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Jun 2024.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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