Cognitive and Socioemotional Skills in Low-Income Countries : Measurement andAssociations with Schooling and Earnings

This paper assesses the reliability and validity of cognitive and socioemotional skills measuresand investigates the correlation between schooling, skills acquisition, and labor earnings. The primary data fromPakistan incorporates two innovations related to measurement and sampling. On measurement, the paper develops andimplements a battery of instruments intended to capture cognitive and socioemotional skills among young adults. Onsampling, the paper uses a panel that follows respondents from their original rural locations in 2003 to theirresidences in 2018, a period over which 38 percent of the respondents left their native villages. In terms of theirvalidity and reliability, our skills measures compare favorably to previous measurement attempts in low- andmiddle-income countries. The following are documented in the data: (a) more years of schooling are correlated with highercognitive and socioemotional skills; (b) labor earnings are correlated with cognitive and socioemotional skills as wellas years of schooling; and (c) the earnings-skills correlations depend on respondents’ migration status. Themagnitudes of the correlations between schooling and skills on the one hand and earnings and skills on the other areconsistent with a widespread concern that such skills are underproduced in the schooling system.