Estimating the Effect of Personality on Male-Female Earnings

Gerrit Mueller () and Erik Plug ()
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Gerrit Mueller: Faculty of Economics, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

No 04-087/3, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: The authors adopt the Five-Factor Model of personality structure to explore how personalityaffected the earnings of a large group of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin highschools in 1957 and were re-interviewed in 1992. All five basic traits–extroversion, agreeableness,conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience–had statistically significant positiveor negative earnings effects, and together they appear to have had effects comparable to those commonlyfound for cognitive ability. Among men, substantial earnings advantages were associatedwith antagonism (the obverse of agreeableness), emotional stability (the obverse of neuroticism),and openness to experience; among women, with conscientiousness and openness to experience.Of the five traits, the evidence indicates that agreeableness had the greatest influence on genderdifferences in earnings: men were considerably more antagonistic (non-agreeable) than women,on average, and men alone were rewarded for that trait.

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the Industrial & Labor Relations Review , 2006, 60(1), 3-22.

Keywords: personality and wages; gender wage gap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08-17, Revised 2005-08-31
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Related works:
Working Paper: Estimating the Effect of Personality on Male-Female Earnings (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20040087

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