The College Type: Personality and Educational Inequality

Shelly Lundberg

Journal of Labor Economics, 2013, vol. 31, issue 3, 421 - 441

Abstract: I examine the effects of cognitive ability and personality traits on college graduation in a recent cohort of young Americans, and how the returns to these traits vary by family background, and find very substantial differences across family background groups in the personality traits that predict successful completion of college, particularly for men. The implications are twofold. First, the returns to noncognitive traits may be highly context dependent. Second, policy discussion concerning educational inequality should include not just the possibilities for remediating the skill levels of poor children, but also approaches to changing the environments that limit their opportunities.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (62)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671056 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671056 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: The College Type: Personality and Educational Inequality (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:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/671056

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().