The Impact of Non-Cognitive Skills Training on Academic and Non-academic Trajectories: From Childhood to Early Adulthood

Yann Algan, Elizabeth Beasley (), Frank Vitaro and Richard Tremblay
Additional contact information
Elizabeth Beasley: ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Frank Vitaro: UdeM - Université de Montréal
Richard Tremblay: UCD - University College Dublin [Dublin]

SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL

Abstract: Non-cognitive skills are closely associated with adult socio-economic success. However, it is unclear whether interventions targeting those skills, rather than cognitive skills, can improve adult outcomes. It is also unclear whether interventions after early childhood can have lasting effects. We show that an intervention focused solely on non-cognitive skills at age 7 can change the lifetime trajectories for children with deficits of non-cognitive skills, increasing self-control and trust in adolescence, improving education achievement, and outcomes in early adulthood such as criminality, education, employment and social capital. We show that improvements in trust and self-control explain much of the impact on education and young adult outcomes, and argue that social skills are an important but neglected aspect of non-cognitive skill development. Using conservative assumptions in a simple framework, we estimate that, as a lower bound, $1 invested in this program yields about $14 in benefits over the lifetime of the participants.

Date: 2014-12-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03429906
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03429906/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Non-Cognitive Skills Training on Academic and Non-academic Trajectories: From Childhood to Early Adulthood (2014)
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:hal:spmain:hal-03429906

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SciencePo Working papers Main from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Contact - Sciences Po Departement of Economics ().