The Mediation Effect of Education on Self-Esteem and Wages

Robert Girtz ()

Journal of Labor Research, 2014, vol. 35, issue 4, 358-372

Abstract: Research suggests a positive relationship between adolescent self-esteem and adult wages. Drawing data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I refine the empirical relationship between self-esteem, wages, and education. The effect of self-esteem on wages is positive and significant when estimating models for the entire sample. This effect, however, becomes statistically insignificant when estimating models for subsamples sorted by educational level. In addition, mediation models suggest that roughly one-third of the total effect of self-esteem on wages is mediated by education. In total, these results indicate that there is a significantly less pronounced direct effect of self-esteem on wages than previously found in the literature. A substantial portion of the effect self-esteem has on wages occurs through its effect on educational attainment. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Self-esteem; Personality; Human capital; Education; Mediation; I20; J01; J24; J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s12122-014-9187-3

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