Inequality in Personality over the Life Cycle

Miriam Gensowski, Mette Goertz and Stefanie Schurer
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Mette Goertz: CEBI, Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Mette Gørtz

No 20-16, CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)

Abstract: We document gender and socioeconomic inequalities in personality over the life cycle (age 18-75), using the Big Five 2 (BFI-2) inventory linked to administrative data on a large Danish population. We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and adjust for cohort and sample-selection effects. We find that: (1) Women of all ages score more highly than men on all personality traits, including three that are positively associated with wages; (2) High-education groups score more favorably on Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism than low-education groups, while there is no socioeconomic inequality by Conscientiousness; (3) Over the life cycle, gender and socioeconomic gaps remain constant, with two exceptions: the gender and SES gaps in Openness to Experience widen, while gender di erences in Neuroticism, a trait associated with worse outcomes, diminish with age. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of gender wage gaps, household production models, and optimal taxation.

Keywords: inequality; personality; big five-2 inventory; life cycle dynamics; gender disadvantage; socioeconomic disadvantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I31 J16 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65
Date: 2020-04-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lab
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Related works:
Journal Article: Inequality in personality over the life cycle (2021)
Working Paper: Inequality in Personality over the Life Cycle (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kucebi:2016

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