Personality characteristics and long-term labor market outcomes: Evidence from twins

Terhi Maczulskij and Jutta Viinikainen

No 299, Working Papers from Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE

Abstract: We use twin data matched to register-based individual information on earnings and employment to examine the association between personality and long-term labor market success. The average of an individual’s earnings and employment were measured in adulthood over the 1990-2009 period. In contrast to previous studies, we use the within-twin dimension of the data to control for unobservable shared family background and genetic confounding factors. Our results suggest that these unobserved factors partly explain the well-documented relation between personality and labor market success. However, we find that achievement (a facet of conscientiousness) is related to higher earnings in the labor market.

Keywords: personality; earnings; employment; unobserved heterogeneity; twin studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2015-12-21
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