 Self-esteem, education, and wages revisitedPedro de Araujo and Stephen Lagos Journal of Economic Psychology, 2013, vol. 34, issue C, 120-132 Abstract: Personality undoubtedly plays a role in determining educational attainment and labor market outcomes. We investigate the role of self-esteem in determining wages directly and indirectly via education. We use data from the 1979 wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY79) to estimate a three equation simultaneous equation model that treats self-esteem, educational attainment, and real wages as endogenous. We find that, while self-esteem has a positive and significant impact on wages indirectly via education, it does not significantly affect wages directly once we control for locus of control. We find that the indirect effect of self-esteem comprises upwards of 80% of the total effect of self-esteem on wages after 1980. Additionally, we find that wages and education both affect self-esteem. We discuss gender differences in the relationships between wages, education, and self-esteem and conclude that females experience a higher rate of return on education than males, and self-esteem is a stronger determinant of educational attainment for males than females. Keywords: Self-esteem; Determinants of wages; Simultaneous equation model; Gender inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:34:y:2013:i:c:p:120-132 DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2012.12.001 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Economic Psychology is currently edited by G. Antonides and D. Read More articles in Journal of Economic Psychology from Elsevier |
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