Are Young People's Educational Outcomes Linked to their Sense of Control?

Juan Barón () and Deborah Cobb-Clark

No 4907, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the link between young people's sense (locus) of control over their lives and their investments in education. We find that young people with a more internal locus of control have a higher probability of finishing secondary school and, conditional on completion, meeting the requirements to obtain a university entrance rank. Moreover, those with an internal locus of control who obtain a university entrance rank achieve somewhat higher rankings than do their peers who have a more external locus of control. Not surprisingly, there is a negative relationship between growing up in disadvantage and educational outcomes. However, this effect does not appear to operate indirectly by increasing the likelihood of having a more external locus of control. In particular, we find no significant relationship between family welfare history and young people's locus of control.

Keywords: locus of control; parental socio-economic background; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H31 I38 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2010-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp4907.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are Young People's Educational Outcomes Linked to their Sense of Control? (2010)
Working Paper: Are Young People's Educational Outcomes Linked to their Sense of Control? (2010)
Working Paper: Are Young People's Educational Outcomes Linked to Their Sense of Control? (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4907

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().