Test Scores, Noncognitive Skills and Economic Growth

Pau Balart (), Matthijs Oosterveen () and Dinand Webbink ()
Additional contact information
Pau Balart: University of the Balearic Islands
Matthijs Oosterveen: University of Porto
Dinand Webbink: Erasmus University Rotterdam

No 9559, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Many studies have found a strong association between economic outcomes of nations and their performance on international cognitive tests. This association is often interpreted as evidence for the importance of cognitive skills for economic growth. However, noncognitive skills, such as motivation and perseverance, are also important for the performance on cognitive tests. This study decomposes the performance on an international test (PISA) into two components that differ with respect to their underlying skills: the starting level and the decline in performance during the test. The first component can be interpreted as a measure of cognitive skills, whereas the second component captures noncognitive skills. We find that countries differ in the starting level and in the decline in performance, and that these differences are stable over time. Both components have a positive and statistically significant association with economic growth, and the estimated effects are quite similar. This suggests that noncognitive skills are important for explaining the relationship between test scores and economic growth.

Keywords: long run economic growth; noncognitive skills; cognitive skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-lma 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, 2018, 63, 134-153

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp9559.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:dp9559

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 ().