How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills

Adrian Hille () and Jürgen Schupp

No 7655, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest that adolescents with music training have better cognitive skills and school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious. These effects do not differ by socio-economic status. Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports, theater or dance. In order to address the non-random selection into music training, we take into account detailed information on parents, which may determine both the decision to pursue music lessons and educational outcomes: socio-economic background, personality, involvement with the child's school, and taste for the arts. In addition, we control for the predicted probability to give up music before age 17 as well as the adolescent's secondary school type. We provide evidence that our results are robust to both reverse causality and the existence of partly treated individuals in the control group.

Keywords: SOEP; cognitive and non-cognitive skills; music; educational achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2015, 44, 56-8

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7655.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How learning a musical instrument affects the development of skills (2015)
Journal Article: How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills (2015)
Working Paper: How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills (2013)
Working Paper: How learning a musical instrument affects the development of skills (2013)
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:dp7655

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 ().