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Cognitive Ability, Wages, and Meritocracy
Abstract
This paper presents new evidence from the NLSY on the importance of meritocracy in American society. In it, we find that general intelligence, or g -- a measure of cognitive ability--is dominant in explaining test score variance. The weights assigned to tests by g are similar for all major demographic groups. These results support Spearman's theory of g. We also find that g and other measures of ability are not rewarded equally across race and gender, evidence against the view that the labor market is organized on meritocratic principles. Additional factors beyond g are required to explain wages and occupational choice. However, both blue collar and white collar wages are poorly predicted by g or even multiple measures of ability. Observed cognitive ability is only a minor predictor of social performance. White collar wages are more g loaded than blue collar wages. Many noncognitive factors determine blue collar wages.
... 4 Spearman (1904) proposed the existence of general intelligence, termed g, which is a single general factor that governs the level of intelligence of an individual. See Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, and Vytlacil (1997) for the development of the literature on this subject. sons' sociability in early adulthood but an insignificant link with their sons' sociability at age 6. ...
... The OLS estimates control for mothers' education, quadratic in mothers' AFQT score, mothers' age and children's age, mothers' marital status, place of residence (region and urban area), three-year averages of family size and household income in 1983, 1984, and 1985, and year dummies. 13 Mothers' sociability (at age 6 and in early adulthood) ...
... The effect of the mothers' sociability on their daughters' sociability is larger and more significant than on that of their sons. 14 13 We report robust standard errors clustered by mothers. 14 Duncan, Kalil, Mayer, Tepper, and Payne (2005) estimate standardized regression coefficients for motherchild links in sociability (both at age 6) and participation in clubs for a sample that includes all racial groups. ...
This paper examines the effect of parents' social skills on children's sociability, using the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). This survey, like some other national surveys, lacks detailed information on parents; to remedy this deficiency, we construct a measure of parents' "sociability" skills based on their occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). The sociability relationship varies across parents and children by gender, but remains statistically significant (especially between fathers and sons), even after controlling for a variety of other background characteristics.
... 4 Spearman (1904) proposed the existence of general intelligence, termed g, which is a single general factor that governs the level of intelligence of an individual. See Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, and Vytlacil (1997) for the development of the literature on this subject. sons' sociability in early adulthood but an insignificant link with their sons' sociability at age 6. ...
... The OLS estimates control for mothers' education, quadratic in mothers' AFQT score, mothers' age and children's age, mothers' marital status, place of residence (region and urban area), three-year averages of family size and household income in 1983, 1984, and 1985, and year dummies. 13 Mothers' sociability (at age 6 and in early adulthood) ...
... The effect of the mothers' sociability on their daughters' sociability is larger and more significant than on that of their sons. 14 13 We report robust standard errors clustered by mothers. 14 Duncan, Kalil, Mayer, Tepper, and Payne (2005) estimate standardized regression coefficients for motherchild links in sociability (both at age 6) and participation in clubs for a sample that includes all racial groups. ...
This paper examines the effect of parents' social skills on children's sociability, using the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). This survey, like some other national surveys, lacks detailed information on parents; to remedy this deficiency, we construct a measure of parents' "sociability" skills based on their occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). The sociability relationship varies across parents and children by gender, but remains statistically significant (especially between fathers and sons), even after controlling for a variety of other background characteristics.
... Then we assume that the efficiency units of search usable for finding a job in an occupation where the worker has contacts are 1 +s, wherẽ s measures the worker's endowment of contacts specific to that occupation. 7 For simplicity, we assume that every worker has his productive advantage and his contacts in exactly one occupation, which may coincide. Specifically, we assume that 7 We start by assuming that social contacts only help workers find jobs. ...
... 7 For simplicity, we assume that every worker has his productive advantage and his contacts in exactly one occupation, which may coincide. Specifically, we assume that 7 We start by assuming that social contacts only help workers find jobs. In Section 4 we extend the model to allow for social contacts to yield some additional benefits to the workers who use them. ...
... Transport, storage, and Communications,(12) Financial intermediation,(13) Real estate, renting, and business activities,(14) Public administration and defense, Compulsory social security, (15) Education,(16) Health and social work, and (17) Other community, social, and personal service activities.Occupations: (1) Legislators and Managers, (2) Small firm managers, (3) Science and health professionals, (4) Teaching, (5) Other professionals, (6) Science and health associated professionals,(7) Teaching and other associate professionals, (8) Office and service clerks, (9) Personal and protective services, (10) Models, salespersons, (11) Skilled agriculture and fishery workers, (12) Extraction, building, and other craft, (13) Metal and precision, printing, etc.,(14) Plant operators, drivers, (15) Machine operators, assemblers,(16) Miscellaneous operators, (17) Sales and service elementary tasks, (18) Agricultural and fishery laborers,(19) Mining, construction, manufacturing, and transport laborers, and (20) Miscellaneous laborers. Grouped occupations: High skill(1)(2)(3)(4)(5), Medium skill(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16), and Low skill(17)(18)(19)(20). ...
Social contacts help to find jobs, but not necessarily in the occupations where workers are most productive. Hence social contacts can generate mismatch between workers' occupational choices and their productive advantage. Accordingly, social networks can lead to low labour force quality, low returns to firms' investment and depressed aggregate productivity. We analyse surveys from both the US and Europe including information on job finding through contacts. Consistent with our predictions, contacts reduce unemployment duration by 1-3 months on average, but they are associated with wage discounts of at least 2.5%. We also find some evidence of negative externalities on aggregate productivity. Copyright (c) The London School of Economics and Political Science 2008.
... 1989; Cawley et al., 1997;Grosse et al., 2002;Neal & Johnson, 1996;Zax & Rees, 2002). It is clear that individual differences in intelligence could cause large individual differences in income. ...
Since Lynn and Vanhanen's book IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002), many publications have evidenced a relationship between national IQ and national prosperity. The strongest statistical case for this lies in Jones and Schneider's (2006) use of Bayesian model averaging to run thousands of regressions on GDP growth (1960-1996), using different combinations of explanatory variables. This generated a weighted average over many regressions to create estimates robust to the problem of model uncertainty. We replicate and extend Jones and Schneider's work with many new robustness tests, including new variables, different time periods, different priors and different estimates of average national intelligence. We find national IQ to be the "best predictor" of economic growth, with a higher average coefficient and average posterior inclusion probability than all other tested variables (over 67) in every test run. Our best estimates find a one point increase in IQ is associated with a 7.8% increase in GDP per capita, above Jones and Schneider's estimate of 6.1%. We tested the causality of national IQs using three different instrumental variables: cranial capacity, ancestry-adjusted UV radiation, and 19 th-century numeracy scores. We found little evidence for reverse causation, with only ancestry-adjusted UV radiation passing the Wu-Hausman test (p < .05) when the logarithm of GDP per capita in 1960 was used as the only control variable.
... Economists have only recently focused their attention on non-cognitive skills. Cognitive skills, while extremely important in determining educational and labour market outcomes (Cawley et al., 1997), fail to explain observed variation in performance fully (Heckman and Rubinstein, 2001;Heckman and LaFontaine, 2010). Early studies showed that traits such as high self-esteem and self-directnessthe sense that own actions are the primary determinants of outcomespositively affect real wages (Osborne, 2000;Murnane et al., 2001), in a higher order of magnitude than human capital (Goldsmith et al., 1997). ...
... In this paper, we follow Koop and Tobias (2004) and make use of all ten ASVAB subtests, which include the four in the AFQT, General Science, Coding Speed, Numeric Operations, as well as three sections commonly referred as the technical composites: Auto and Shop Information, Electronics Information, and Mechanical Comprehension to measure mechanical ability (Prada and Urzúa, 2017). A principal component analysis (PCA) of all ten standardized test scores reveals that the first principal component explains 64% of the variance using individuals in our final sample, which we denote as the cognitive factor in our PCA approach, a commonly employed method in the literature (Cawley et al., 1997;Heckman and Vytlacil, 2001;Koop and Tobias, 2004;. In addition, we also directly use the standardized test scores of all ten ASVAB subtests as a robustness check, which we refer to as the non-PCA approach. ...
... The ASVAB is a commonly used predictor in a wide range of studies [e.g. [52][53][54]. For a more meaningful interpretation of differences between individuals on cognition, we divided the variable by 10, permitting us to interpret the measure as a decile increase rather than the small magnitude associated with an increase of a percentile. ...
Background
Using a nationally representative longitudinal cohort, we examine how cognitive aptitude in early adolescence is associated with heterogeneous pathways of marijuana use from age sixteen through young adulthood. We also examine whether this relationship can be explained by the role of cognitive aptitude in the social organization of peer group deviance.
Methods
Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we identified 5 latent trajectories of frequency of marijuana use between ages 16 and 26: abstainers, dabblers, early heavy quitters, consistent users, and persistent heavy users. Multinomial regression assessed the relationship of cognitive aptitude in early adolescence with these latent trajectories, including the role of peer group substance use in this relationship.
Results
A one decile increase in cognitive aptitude in early adolescence is associated with greater relative risk of the dabbler trajectory (RR = 1.048; p < .001) and consistent user trajectory (RR = 1.126; p < .001), but lower relative risk of the early heavy quitter trajectory (RR = 0.917; p < .05) in comparison with the abstainer trajectory. There was no effect for the persistent heavy user trajectory. The inclusion of peer group substance use–either via illegal drugs or smoking–had no effect on these relationships.
Conclusions
Adolescents who rate higher in cognitive aptitude during early adolescence may be more likely to enter into consistent but not extreme trajectories of marijuana use as they age into young adulthood. Cognition may not influence patterns of marijuana use over time via the organization of peer groups.
... Also, younger ages at migration appear to be important for intermarriage rates and socioeconomic integration and success (Åslund, Böhlmark, & Skans, 2015). There are of course also other factors, including education, that have become increasingly important for those who seek a partner and for the success of the household (Autor, Katz, & Kearney, 2006;Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, & Vytlacil, 1997;Grogger & Hansen, 2011). ...
The family formation consequences of refugee movements is of relevance to international demographic development and for countries accepting forced migrants. Finland provides a unique opportunity to understand the long term effects of involuntary migration on subsequent family formation patterns using population register data. We study individuals who were aged up to 17 years when they were forced to migrate from Finnish Karelia, following the Soviet annexation in the 1940s. There was no migrant selectivity that could affect fertility, and no one had the opportunity to eventually return migrate. For displaced women, but not displaced men, we find that the experience of forced migration in childhood lead to a slightly lower risk of finding a partner, whereas the influence on fertility was small and slightly positive only for men. Forced migrants were more likely to partner with other forced migrants, but we find no robust evidence that partnering behaviour of this kind promotes fertility.
... In terms of regression analysis, if we regress the outcome variable on the treatment variable, then any remaining correlation between the error term in the regression and the treatment variable indicates "endogeneity", or the fact that we have a problem with either unmeasured confounders (omitted variables affecting both the treatment and the outcome), or reverse causality (the outcome is affecting whether a person enters the treatment group); an IV is a factor that is correlated to whether or not a person receives the treatment, but uncorrelated with the error term in the regression of the outcome variable on the treatment variable (it is "exogenous"). For example, suppose we wish to identify the influence of education on future wages; education is endogenous to wages, because a number of factors affect how much educational opportunity people have and their future wages, but remain unmeasured in most observational datasets (e.g., racial discrimination in residential housing markets is typically unmeasured, but thought to profoundly influence the quality of a school district and associated educational opportunities for a child (Mayer and Jencks 1989), as well as their local employment opportunities and thus their future wages; furthermore, intellectual abilities are often unmeasured in observational datasets, but may be expected to influence both education received and wages earned (Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, and Vytlacil 1997)). An IV found by Angrist and Krueger (1991) for amount of education received by a person in the US is the quarter of a person's birth; the quarter of birth strongly influences how much education a person receives, because compulsory attendance laws in the US forced individuals to remain in school until they were at least 16 years old and those individuals with an early birthday (quarter of birth 1 or 2 in a given year) were free to drop out of school after their sophomore year of high school, whereas those individuals with a later birthday (quarter of birth 3 or 4) were forced to complete the junior year. ...
Estimating the causal treatment effect of an intervention using observational data is difficult due to unmeasured confounders. Many analysts use instrumental variables (IVs) to introduce a randomizing element to observational data analysis, potentially reducing bias created by unobserved confounders. Several persistent problems in the field have served as limitations to IV analyses, particularly the prevalence of “weak” IVs, or instrumental variables that do not effectively randomize individuals to the intervention or control group (leading to biased and unstable treatment effect estimates), as well as IV-based estimates being highly model dependent, requiring parametric adjustment for measured confounders, and often having high mean squared errors in the estimated causal effects. To overcome these problems, the study design method of “near-far matching” has been devised, which “filters” data from a cohort by simultaneously matching individuals within the cohort to be “near” (similar) on measured confounders and “far” (different) on levels of an IV. To facilitate the application of near-far matching to analytical problems, we introduce the R package nearfar and illustrate its application to both a classical example and a simulated dataset. We illustrate how the package can be used to “strengthen” a weak IV by adjusting the “near-ness” and “far-ness” of a match, reduce model dependency, enable nonparametric adjustment for measured confounders, and lower mean squared error in estimated causal effects. We additionally illustrate how to utilize the nearfar package when analyzing either continuous or binary treatments, how to prioritize variables in the match, and how to calculate F statistics of IV strength with or without adjustment for measured confounders.
... Therefore, this study used the parameter estimates from Light and Ahn's study to approximate the coefficient of RRT for consumers in the NLSY97 5. We use the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to measure cognitive ability. The full ASVAB or a subset known as the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) have been used extensively by labor economists and are regarded as valid measures of cognitive ability (e.g., see Cawley et al. 1997;Cawley, Heckman, and Vytlacil 2001;Flores-Lagunes and Light 2010;Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua 2006). ...
... Many studies on skills and labor outcomes stress that skills are multiple in nature (Bowles et al., 2001; Borghans et al., 2006; Heckman et al., 2006 ). Traditionally speaking, cognitive skills, defined roughly as intelligence or acquired knowledge are considered important determinants of job characteristics (Cawley et al., 1996Cawley et al., , 1998 Kautz et al., 2014; Heckman et al., 2006; Nisbett et al., 2012). However, a growing body of research suggests that non-cognitive skills, defined as personality traits or socio-emotional abilities that are intrinsic to the individual (say perseverance, attentiveness or empathy), may be just as important as cognitive skills in terms of enabling a person to have a good job (Heckman & Cunha, 2007, 2009 Duncan & Magnuson, 2011; Hall & Farkas, 2011). ...
This thesis proposes analytical and practical frameworks for the anlysis of human
development that are useful for policy purposes. The main theoretical underpinning is Sen’s
Capability Approach, which advocates a pluralistic view of human life and the expansion of
freedom as a normative rule towards the public good. The thesis comprises three chapters; in
the first one, Sen’s approach is theoretically supplemented with elements of J. Roemer’s
Equality of Opportunity approach to provide concrete suggestions of policy configurations for
improving livelihoods with justice. In the second chapter, economic and econometric
frameworks are proposed for this theoretical combination. As many elements that are
intertwined in this vision of human development are hard to directly observe, a Simultaneous
Equation Model with latent variables is developed and implemented using Bolivian data. The
third chapter focuses on one specific aspect of human development, namely work-related
wellbeing based on J. Heckman’s technology of skill formation.
... Because it supports performance across a wide variety of important tasks, general intelligence, or g, is perhaps the best example of a "fundamental" capacity. General intelligence is the single strongest predictor of many measured traits and abilities, including occupational level and performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 2004), and strongly predicts other life outcomes as well (Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, & Vytlacil, 1997;Gottfredson, 1997;Heckman, 1995;Herrnstein & Murray, 1994). ...
Many interventions targeting cognitive skills or socioemotional skills and behaviors demonstrate initially promising but then quickly disappearing impacts. Our paper seeks to identify the key features of interventions, as well as the characteristics and environments of the children and adolescents who participate in them, that can be expected to sustain persistently beneficial program impacts. We describe three such processes: skill-building, foot-in-the-door and sustaining environments. We argue that skill-building interventions should target “trifecta” skills – ones that are malleable, fundamental, and would not have developed eventually in the absence of the intervention. Successful foot-in-the-door interventions equip a child with the right skills or capacities at the right time to avoid imminent risks (e.g., grade failure or teen drinking) or seize emerging opportunities (e.g., entry into honors classes). The sustaining environments perspective views high quality of environments subsequent to the completion of the intervention as crucial for sustaining early skill gains. These three perspectives generate both complementary and competing hypotheses regarding the nature, timing and targeting of interventions that generate enduring impacts.
... Economists have only recently focused their attention on non-cognitive skills. Cognitive skills, while extremely important in determining educational and labour market outcomes (Cawley, Conneely, Heckman and Vytlacil 1997), fail to fully explain observed variation in performance Rubinstein 2001, Heckman andLaFontaine 2010). Early studies showed that traits such as high selfesteem and self-directness the sense that own actions are the primary determinants of outcomes positively a↵ect real wages (Osborne 2000, Murnane, Willett, Braatz andDuhaldeborde 2001), in a higher order of magnitude than human capital (Goldsmith, Veum and Darity 1997). ...
While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labour market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. We take advantage of a controlled laboratory set-up to explore whether this relationship operates through productivity. Using a real-effort task, we analyse the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance. We find that more neurotic subjects perform worse, and that more conscientious individuals perform better. These findings suggest that at least part of the effect of personality on labour market outcomes operates through productivity. In addition, we find evidence that gender and university major affect this relationship.
... Economists have only recently focused their attention on non-cognitive skills. Cognitive skills, while extremely important in determining educational and labour market outcomes (Cawley, Conneely, Heckman and Vytlacil 1997), fail to fully explain observed variation in performance Rubinstein 2001, Heckman andLaFontaine 2010). Early studies showed that traits such as high selfesteem and self-directness −the sense that own actions are the primary determinants of outcomes− positively affect real wages (Osborne 2000, Murnane, Willett, Braatz andDuhaldeborde 2001), in a higher order of magnitude than human capital (Goldsmith, Veum and Darity 1997). ...
While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labor market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. In this paper, we take advantage of a controlled laboratory set-up to test whether this relationship operates through productivity, and isolate this mechanism from other channels such as bargaining ability or self-selection into jobs. Using a gender neutral real-effort task, we analyse the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance. We find that more neurotic subjects perform worse, and that more conscientious individuals perform better. These findings are in line with previous survey studies and suggest that at least part of the effect of personality on labor market outcomes operates through productivity. In addition, we find evidence that gender and university major affect the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance.
... There is evidence that WMC are related to the speed of category learning on a range of categorization tasks (DeCaro et al., 2008;DeCaro et al., 2009;Erickson, 2008;Lewandowsky, 2011). Recently, economists have begun focusing on the empirical relationship between cognitive capacity and economic performance (Cawley et al., 1997;Lynn and Vanhanen, 2002;Weede and Kampf, 2002;Zax and Rees, 2002;Gould, 2005; Jones and Schneider, cognitive capacity on the outcomes of games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma Game (Devetag and Warglien, 2008;Hirsh and Peterson, 2009), the Ultimatum Game (Cappelletti et al, 2008), the Dictator Game (Cornelissen et al. 2007;Ben-Ner, Putterman, Kong and Magan, 2004), the Chicken Game (Devetag and Warglien, 2008) and the Trust Game (Ben-Ner and Halldorsson, 2010;Burks et al., 2009). The effect of cognitive capacity on market experiments' outcomes, however, has rarely been addressed, a state of affairs reflecting, to some extent, the widely held assumption (at least among economists) that the market mechanism is so powerful and robust that it leaves no room to participants' intelligence or learning. ...
We present an analysis of the data gathered during eight double auction experimental
sessions. The aim of this analysis is to assess the effect of the subjects’ working memory
skills and personality traits on their performances. In the experiments, the subjects had to
sequentially face four markets with different structures. We defined the strategies as the
combinations of rounds at which the various tokens were bought. We found that the subjects
separated into a few classes characterized by different strategies. Moreover, we found that, in
general, the group that reached the best strategy was associated with higher working memory
test scores than the other groups. However, we also found that the relationship between
working memory and performance depends on the market structure. Finally, we found some
evidence that, at least within some market structures, personality traits such a hard-working
attitude, an easygoing and an outgoing personality were associated with better performance.
... We residualize separately by race and ethnicity each of the ASVAB tests on age at the time of the test, standardize the residuals to mean zero and variance 1, and construct a scale of the standardized residuals (a = .92) with a mean of 0, a standard deviation of 0.75, and a range of -3 to 3 (Cawley et al. 1997). 10. ...
hte- applies -pscore- by Becker and Ichino (Stata Journal 2:358-377) to construct balanced propensity score strata and, within each stratum, estimates the average treatment effect. -hte- then tests for linear trend in treatment effects using variance-weighted least squares. The stratum-specific treatment effects and the estimated linear trend are displayed in a twoway graph. Note that the -pscore- command is required, which is available from the Stata Journal website (type -net sj 5-3 st0026_2- in Stata).
... al G-factor has also been attributed dominant in explaining job performance (Ree & Earles, 1991) and as the largest contributor to academic performance (Brodnick & Ree, 1995). In a discrimination context, Neal & Johnson (1995) has explained the entire black-white wage gap for young women, and much of the wage gap for young men using the AFQT score. Cawley et al. (1997) consents to the view that G explains socio-economic outcomes. However, they maintain that the contribution is modest and that more variables are needed to explain wages and occupational choice. They also find that whether using G or the AFQT as a cognitive ability measure makes little difference in explanatory power in wage regressions. ...
... We residualize separately by race and ethnicity each of the ASVAB tests on age at the time of the test, standardize the residuals to mean zero and variance 1, and construct a scale of the standardized residuals (a = .92) with a mean of 0, a standard deviation of 0.75, and a range of -3 to 3 (Cawley et al. 1997). 10. ...
Individuals differ not only in their background characteristics, but also in how they respond to a particular treatment, intervention, or stimulation. In particular, treatment effects may vary systematically by the propensity for treatment. In this paper, we discuss a practical approach to studying heterogeneous treatment effects as a function of the treatment propensity, under the same assumption commonly underlying regression analysis: ignorability. We describe one parametric method and two non-parametric methods for estimating interactions between treatment and the propensity for treatment. For the first method, we begin by estimating propensity scores for the probability of treatment given a set of observed covariates for each unit and construct balanced propensity score strata; we then estimate propensity score stratum-specific average treatment effects and evaluate a trend across them. For the second method, we match control units to treated units based on the propensity score and transform the data into treatment-control comparisons at the most elementary level at which such comparisons can be constructed; we then estimate treatment effects as a function of the propensity score by fitting a non-parametric model as a smoothing device. For the third method, we first estimate non-parametric regressions of the outcome variable as a function of the propensity score separately for treated units and for control units and then take the difference between the two non-parametric regressions. We illustrate the application of these methods with an empirical example of the effects of college attendance on womens fertility.
... 4 The correlation is 0.3356 (and 0.1309 when Mexico is removed ), suggesting that economic success, at the aggregate level, is mildly related to cognitive ability. " Ability factors other than g are economically useful " (Cawley, Connelly, Heckman, and Vytlacil 1997), and " noncognitive ability is as important, if not more important, than cognitive ability " (Heckman , Stixrud, and Urzua 2006). Throughout this paper, I rely on the AFQT as a measure of cognitive ability and use the Rotter Locus of Control Scale and Rosenberg Self-Esteem policy recommendations. ...
The signaling model assumes that …rms screen workers on the ba-sis of an educational signal, since they are unable to observe ability accurately. Subsequent research on employer learning and statisti-cal discrimination has used cognitive tests, such as the Armed Forces Quali…cation Test (AFQT), as the sole measure of ability. In this pa-per I review previous …ndings in a multiple-ability approach using both cognitive and noncognitive measures. I …nd that employer learning and statistical discrimination takes place with all abilities. The learn-ing about productive ability is public across …rms. The general speed of employer learning about the productive ability of workers is 80% quicker that when using only the AFQT as a measure of unobserved ability, and the contribution of signaling to the return to schooling is 50% smaller as a result. Estimates also show that the speed of em-ployer learning is quicker for college graduates than it is for high school graduates. These results globally suggest that, contrary to the exist-ing literature on signaling, education emits a multi-dimensional signal of ability. These …ndings also provide fresh evidence of the nontrivial role of noncognitive ability in education and in wage determination.
... ured cognitive ability, either on its own or combined with the " standard " human capital variables, explains only a very small fraction of the wage inequality observed in the US population. For example, Dickens, Kane and Schultze (1995) report that differences in cognitive test scores can account for less than ten percent of all income inequality. Cawley et al.(1997) Aside from their low explanatory power, the emphasis on cognitive skills in existing statistical analyses of wage determination is surprising also in light of the qualities employers report valuing most when hiring workers. For example, in a recent nationwide survey, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE, 2000) found ...
Very preliminary: comments most welcome Employers claim to place a high value on interpersonal skills, including leadership, conflict resolution and teamwork, in hiring and retaining employees. They often rank the importance of these skills above notions of technical training and cognitive ability. This paper estimates the net impact of one such "noncognitive" skill –leadership ability--on labor market outcomes, controlling for the standard human capital and cognitive skill measures typically used by economists in earnings functions. To avoid endogeneity we correlate pre-labor market measures of leadership skills with labor market outcomes in adulthood.
... Writing ε V = − log(r), ϕ(z) = exp(−zη) and −`(s) = c s = Q s ρ s we obtain representation (17) and (18). Adding one-sided shocks ν s as in (19) preserves weak convexity and provides us with an additional margin of flexibility in estimating the model, allowing for spell-specific innovations in information sets. ...
... Interestingly, they find that IQ-which was measured when these men were teenagers-does a better job predicting wages in a worker's 50's than in his 20's. Neal and Johnson (1996) similarly find that one IQ point is associated with γ =1.3%, while Bishop (1989) finds γ =1.1%. 4 Cawley et al (1997) find U.S. estimates in a similar range, even when they break the estimates down by ethnic group and gender. Behrman et al. (2004) survey some developing country studies, and find that the mean and median estimates both imply γ = 0.8%. ...
"We show that a country's average IQ score is a useful predictor of the wages that immigrants from that country earn in the United States, whether or not one adjusts for immigrant education. Just as in numerous microeconomic studies, 1 IQ point predicts 1% higher wages, suggesting that IQ tests capture an important difference in cross-country worker productivity. In a cross-country development accounting exercise, about one-sixth of the global inequality in log income can be explained by the effect of large, persistent differences in national average IQ on the private marginal product of labor. This suggests that cognitive skills matter more for groups than for individuals." ("JEL" J24, J61, O47) Copyright (c) 2009 Western Economic Association International.
... and results of a cognitive ability test administered to respondents in 1980 (the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery [ASVAB], adjusted for age and standardized followingCawley et al. [1997]). Social-psychological variables were measured by parents' encouragement and friends' plans in 1979. ...
Educational expansion has led to greater diversity in the social backgrounds of college students. We ask how schooling interacts with this diversity to influence marriage formation among men and women. Relying on data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3208), we use a propensity score approach to group men and women into social strata and multilevel event history models to test differences in the effects of college attendance across strata. We find a statistically significant, positive trend in the effects of college attendance across strata, with the largest effects of college on first marriage among the more advantaged and the smallest-indeed, negative-effects among the least advantaged men and women. These findings appear consistent with a mismatch in the marriage market between individuals' education and their social backgrounds.
... Instead of showing that income and intelligence were positively related, they showed that few people with high IQ test scores are in poverty. Cawley, Heckman, Conneely, and Vytlacil (1996), Cawley, Conneely, Heckman, and Vytlacil (1997) reexamined these conclusions by constructing a more general measure of cognitive ability and found this measure was a poor predictor of wages for any race or gender. ...
How important is intelligence to financial success? Using the NLSY79, which tracks a large group of young U.S. baby boomers, this research shows that each point increase in IQ test scores raises income by between 616 per year after holding a variety of factors constant. Regression results suggest no statistically distinguishable relationship between IQ scores and wealth. Financial distress, such as problems paying bills, going bankrupt or reaching credit card limits, is related to IQ scores not linearly but instead in a quadratic relationship. This means higher IQ scores sometimes increase the probability of being in financial difficulty.
Preschool policy is motivated by the notion that early childhood care and education increases school readiness, which, in turn, provides a foundation for lifelong advantages and greater success in adulthood. We question the degree to which this simple skill-building model is an effective framework for preschool policy: while investments in preschool education boost school readiness in the short run, some recent studies show that initial gains either quickly disappear or turn negative. Taking advantage of end-of-preschool gains requires considerable effort toward optimizing classroom learning experiences, integrating the learning goals of preschool and K–12 schooling, and pushing for new discoveries about early-life skills and capacities that preschools are uniquely positioned to target. Supporting parental employment and access to affordable childcare also benefit child development, so we argue that the preschool policy portfolio should include mechanisms that more broadly expand childcare access to support family capacities.
College graduates earn higher wages than high school graduates by age 30. Among women, the advantages of a college degree decline somewhat as they age, although they are still substantial at age 50; for men, the advantage of a college degree grows throughout the life cycle. Most previous research on returns to higher education has focused on income at a single point in time or averaged over multiple years; our contribution is to study how returns vary by age. We also document how these patterns vary by the propensity of graduating from college. We find modest wage returns for mid-propensity college graduates, but large returns for low-propensity and, for men, high-propensity college graduates. Our results rely on propensity score–based matching combined with multilevel growth curve models applied to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort.
This paper reviews four treatment parameters that have become commonly used in the program evaluation literature: the average treatment effect, the effect of treatment on the treated, the local average treatment effect, and the marginal treatment effect. We derive simply computed closed‐form expressions for these treatment parameters in a latent variable framework with Gaussian error terms. These parameters can be estimated using nothing more than output from a standard two‐step procedure. We also briefly describe recent work that seeks to go beyond mean effects and estimate the distributions associated with various outcome gains. The techniques presented in the paper are applied to estimate the return to some form of college education for various populations using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.
This paper proposes and estimates an interactive fixed effects model, which allows for time-variant valuation of unobserved manager attributes. We find that two managerial traits can explain executive compensation over time: talent and conservatism. The market premium for talent is higher in bull markets, as the higher marginal productivity of human capital during these periods increases the demand and thus the price for talents. Such pay premium is concentrated among top talented managers, who earn a premium about five times that of median talented managers. The pay premium for conservatism is linked to the equity market risk premium, with conservatism being discounted (compensated) during the low (high) risk premium periods. We show that risk-taking managers are rewarded during the early period of our sample. However, after the periods characterized by higher risk premium, such as the financial crisis, conservatism becomes a more desirable trait.
Inequality has become a defining feature of our time and concerns are growing that artificial intelligence, human-enhancement and global ecological breakdown could cause levels to spiral upwards. Although public disapproval of current inequalities is widespread, studies also show that people don’t desire equality, but prefer ‘fair’, still significant inequalities. Here, I argue these preferences are rooted in ideals of meritocracy and intuitive notions of free will; values that’ll become increasingly tenuous in a future of human enhancement, where they could legitimise mass inequalities. Maintaining an illusion of free will is often argued to be needed to disincentivise immoral behaviour, but it also creates a vicious feedback: It provides social legitimacy to substantial inequalities, which exacerbate precisely those immoral behaviours that the illusion is intended to mitigate. However, meritocratic values, and their foundational notion of individual agency, are neither natural nor inevitable – they’re mediated by social practices. To see what egalitarian practices may look like, I review the rich anthropology literature on egalitarian societies. This highlights an irony, in that the meritocratic ideals proposed by contemporary politicians as a remedy to entrenched inequalities are the same values seen as the origin of inequality in existing egalitarian societies around the world.
Recent advances have led to the discovery of specific genetic variants that predict educational attainment. We study how these variants, summarized as a linear index-known as a polygenic score-are associated with human capital accumulation and labor market outcomes in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We present two main sets of results. First, we find evidence that the genetic factors measured by this score interact strongly with childhood socioeconomic status in determining educational outcomes. In particular, although the polygenic score predicts higher rates of college graduation on average, this relationship is substantially stronger for individuals who grew up in households with higher socioeconomic status relative to those who grew up in poorer households. Second, the polygenic score predicts labor earnings even after adjusting for completed education, with larger returns in more recent decades. These patterns suggest that the genetic traits that promote education might allow workers to better accommodate ongoing skill biased technological change. Consistent with this interpretation, we find a positive association between the polygenic score and nonroutine analytic tasks that have benefited from the introduction of new technologies. Nonetheless, the college premium remains a dominant determinant of earnings differences at all levels of the polygenic score. Given the role of childhood SES in predicting college attainment, this raises concerns about wasted potential arising from limited household resources.
Do employers recognize noncognitive skills at the beginning of a career or is there a learning process? Does learning transfer perfectly across employers or is there a degree to which learning resets as employees change jobs throughout their careers? This paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 to incorporate measures of noncognitive skills into a model of symmetric employer learning described originally by Altonji and Pierret (2001) and nested in a model of asymmetric employer learning as in Schönberg (2007). I find evidence that employers reward self‐esteem, internal control, and schooling initially, while rewarding cognitive skills and motivation over time.
Parental income and wealth contribute to children’s success but are at least partly endogenous to parents’ cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the degree to which mothers’ skills measured in early adulthood confound the relationship between their economic resources and their children’s postsecondary education outcomes. Analyses of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 suggest that maternal cognitive and noncognitive skills attenuate half of parental income’s association with child baccalaureate college attendance, a fifth of its association with elite college attendance, and a quarter of its association with bachelor’s degree completion. Maternal skills likewise attenuate a third of parental wealth’s association with children’s baccalaureate college attendance, half of its association with elite college attendance, and a fifth of its association with bachelor’s degree completion. Observational studies of the relationship between parents’ economic resources and children’s postsecondary attainments that fail to account for parental skills risk seriously overstating the benefits of parental income and wealth.
We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of human capital development of a child that can explain why a parent-child relationship might lead to child maltreatment. Assuming that a parent cannot observe a child’s human capital accumulation or effort, and that the child’s time preference develops endogenously, an unstable path of the parent’s beliefs regarding the child can persist in equilibrium when the parent faces a high degree of uncertainty in inferring the child’s human capital. The parent with an initial high estimate of the human capital then tends to underestimate the child’s effort, which results in persistently punitive—abusive—nteractions.
The increasing tendency to establish schools outside the government supported system is examined and their achievement in varying educational performance reviewed. Different arrangements have developed in various countries as to government support and the manner in which access is provided. Research demonstrating that individual student performance is influenced by average socioeconomic levels of the school class is considered. The evidence revealing that independent schools do not produce higher performing students after discounting for socioeconomic differences in enrolment is reviewed. Standardised high stakes testing and its application are considered in respect of its impact on curriculum, parental choice and education outcomes. The impact of the No Child Left Behind policy introduced in the US by the administration of George W. Bush is reviewed. The effectiveness of intrinsic motivation in enhancing individual student performance is considered. The impact of various disabilities such as hearing impairment and its incidence in children living in poverty is noted.
The possibility of enhancing human abilities often raises public concern about equality and social impact. This chapter aims at one particular group of technologies, cognitive enhancement, and one particular fear, that enhancement will create social divisions and possibly expanding inequalities. The chapter argues that cognitive enhancements could offer significant social and economic benefits. The basic forms of internal cognitive enhancement technologies foreseen today are pharmacological modifications, genetic interventions, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and neural implants. Cognitive enhancements can influence the economy through reduction of losses, individual economic benefits, and society-wide benefits. The strongest objection to the introduction of any enhancement technology is that it will create inequality, injustice, and unfairness. While there are clear economic and social benefits to cognitive enhancement, there exist anumber of obstacles to its development and use. One obstacle is the present system for licensing drugs and medical treatments.
Human capital is an important determinant of individual and aggregate economic outcomes, and a major input to scientific progress. It has been suggested that advances in genomics may open up new avenues to enhance human intellectual abilities genetically, complementing environmental interventions such as education and nutrition. One way to do this would be via embryo selection in the context of in vitro fertilization (IVF). In this article, we analyze the feasibility, timescale, and possible societal impacts of embryo selection for cognitive enhancement. We find that embryo selection, on its own, may have significant (but likely not drastic) impacts over the next 50 years, though large effects could accumulate over multiple generations. However, there is a complementary technology – stem cell-derived gametes – which has been making rapid progress and which could amplify the impact of embryo selection, enabling very large changes if successfully applied to humans.
Improvements in enumeration abilities that emerge over late childhood are primarily thought to reflect perceptual developments such as increases in subitizing limits for small sets and faster shifting of attention associated with serially counting larger sets. Contributions of conceptual knowledge development, such as the growing appreciation of how whole numbers are composed of subsets of whole numbers, are not as well understood. This study examined the emergence of a process referred to as “groupitizing,” which captures how children may capitalize on grouping information to facilitate enumeration processes. We examined enumeration speed in a cross-sectional sample of children (N = 378), spanning kindergarten through third grade, using arrays of dots. Arrays were either unstructured or grouped by proximity into subsets in the subitizing range (i.e., three subgroups of 1–3 items). Kindergarten children showed no evidence of grouping structure on enumeration. First-grade children enumerated grouped arrays faster than unstructured arrays. This structure effect grew progressively stronger in subsequent grades. Enumeration speed for unstructured arrays increased with set size, yet for grouped arrays the impact of set size was dependent on grade level. For kindergartners, the grouping manipulation had no impact on the effect of set size. For older children, the grouping manipulation reduced the effect of set size on enumeration. Furthermore, individual differences in how set size affected enumeration of grouped arrays showed unique patterns of association with performance on standardized symbolic arithmetic fluency tests, suggesting a unique role for the construct of groupitizing in the development of enumeration fluency and symbolic math skills.
The US experienced two dramatic changes in the structure of education in a fifty year period. The first was a large expansion of educational attainment; the second, an increase in test score gaps between college bound and non-college bound students. This paper documents the impact of these two trends on the composition of school groups by ability and the importance of these composition effects for wages. The main finding is that there is a growing gap between the abilities of high school and college-educated workers that accounts for one-half of the college wage premium for recent cohorts and for the entire rise of the college wage premium between the 1910 and 1960 birth cohorts.
This paper provides evidence that scores on simple, low-stakes tests are associated with future economic success because the scores also reflect test takers' personality traits associated with their level of intrinsic motivation. To establish this, I use the coding speed test that was administered without incentives to participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). I show that, controlling for cognitive ability, the coding speed scores are correlated with future earnings of male NLSY participants. I provide evidence that the coding speed scores relate to intrinsic motivation. I show that the scores of the highly motivated, though less educated, group (potential recruits to the U.S. military), are higher than the NLSY participants' scores. I use controlled experiments to show directly that intrinsic motivation is an important component of the unincentivized coding speed scores and that it relates to test takers' personality traits.
This paper was accepted by Teck Ho, behavioral economics.
This article shows that reverse discrimination policies can find a justification purely on efficiency grounds. We study the optimal provision of education when households belong to different groups, differing in the distribution of the potential to benefit from education among individuals, which is private information. The main result is that high-potential individuals from groups with relatively few high-potential individuals should receive more education than otherwise identical individuals from groups with a more favorable distribution of these benefits.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) we introduce and estimate various Bayesian hierarchical models that investigate the nature of unobserved hetero- geneity in returns to schooling. We consider a variety of possible forms for the heterogeneity, some motivated by previous theoretical and empirical work and some new ones, and let the data decide among the competing specifications. Empirical results indicate that heterogeneity is present in re- turns to education. Furthermore, we find strong evidence that the heterogeneity follows a continuous rather than discrete distribution, and that bivariate Normality provides a very reasonable description of individual-level heterogeneity in intercepts and returns to schooling.
A number of studies have found that social skills (e.g., communication, interpersonal in-teractions, and leadership skills) are important determinants of labor market outcomes, including occupation and wages. This paper examines whether social skills are linked across generations; and whether a child's occupational choice is determined by his/her parent's abilities and personality traits. There are few studies on the intergenerational transmission of adult social skills due to a lack of data on parents' social skills. To resolve this problem, we use occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT) to proxy for the parents' skills. Also utilized is the U.S. National Longi-tudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). A model of intergenerational skill following is presented. Subsequently, by constructing the appropriate measure of social skills, we find that social skills link across generations. The correlation coefficient is computed, which measures the closeness of the direction of the multidimensional parent-child skill vectors. Skill correlation is found for father-son pairs, and the correlation is greater for whites than for blacks. White sons earn a wage premium for working in occupations that require similar skills to their fathers; whereas, black sons incur a wage penalty. This implies a transfer of occupationally-related human capital for whites, but not for blacks. Evidence for nepotism is found, when sons earn a wage premium for working in the same occupation as their fathers.
It has been proposed that one's self-esteem is both a cause and a consequence of one's extrinsic career success, but empirical research examining the direction of these effects is lacking. We tested a model which examines the relationships among self-esteem, education, occupational prestige, and income over a span of seven years during early careers. We use social identity theory to propose that self-esteem will be affected by extrinsic career success, and self-consistency theory to propose that extrinsic career success will be affected by self-esteem. Our results, based on a cross-lagged regression design, suggest that self-esteem increases occupational prestige (β= .22), and income (β= .22), but career outcomes did not alter self-esteem. Implications of these results for the study of self-esteem and careers are explored.
Que l’estime de soi d’une personne soit à la fois une cause et une conséquence de son succès externe en termes de carrière est établi, mais les recherches empiriques examinant la direction de ces effets manquent. Nous testons un modèle examinant les relations entre l’estime de soi, l’éducation, le prestige professionnel et le revenu sur une durée de 7 ans à partir du début de carrière. Nous nous référons à la théorie de l’identité sociale pour montrer que l’estime de soi est affectée par un succès externe intervenant dans la carrière, et la théorie de consistance de soi pour montrer que ce succès externe est affecté par l’estime de soi. Nos résultats, basés sur une analyse de régression croisée, montrent que l’estime de soi accroît le prestige professionnel (b = .22) et les revenus (b = .22), mais les résultats relatifs à la carrière n’affectent pas l’estime de soi. Les implications de ces résultats pour l’étude de l’estime de soi et de la carrière sont explorées.
The labour market returns to education and cognitive skills are examined using the Australian component of the IALS from 2006. A key feature of the data is the availability of objective measures of literacy, numeracy and problem‐solving skills, along with a rich array of personal and job‐related characteristics. The mean return to an additional year of education is estimated to be 6.2 per cent, almost one‐third of which may be attributed to the acquisition of cognitive skills. Controlling for cognitive skills in the earnings equation has a small effect on the estimated return to labour market experience, while accounting for approximately half of the negative wage gap for immigrants from NESBs. The return to cognitive skills is uniform across quantiles of the conditional hourly earnings distribution. There is strong evidence of credentialism in the returns to education in Australia. A significant component of the ‘sheepskin’ effects in the returns to education is attributable to the higher cognitive skills associated with the completion of a credential.
This paper considers large N and large T panel data models with unobservable multiple interactive effects, which are correlated with the regressors. In earnings studies, for example, workers' motivation, persistence, and diligence combined to influence the earnings in addition to the usual argument of innate ability. In macroeconomics, interactive effects represent unobservable common shocks and their heterogeneous impacts on cross sections. We consider identification, consistency, and the limiting distribution of the interactive-effects estimator. Under both large N and large T, the estimator is shown to be root(N T) consistent, which is valid in the presence of correlations and heteroskedasticities of unknown form in both dimensions. We also derive the constrained estimator and its limiting distribution, imposing additivity coupled with interactive effects. The problem of testing additive versus interactive effects is also studied. In addition, we consider identification and estimation of models in the presence of a grand mean, time-invariant regressors, and common regressors. Given identification, the rate of convergence and limiting results continue to hold. Copyright 2009 The Econometric Society.
This paper uses a flexible modeling strategy to examine the roles of measured ability, family characteristics and proxies for secondary schooling quality as determinants of the decision to enter college. While previous work on this topic has been careful to determine which explanatory variables to include when modeling college entry decisions, few studies have been concerned about appropriate distributional assumptions, (i.e. choice of link function). In this paper, I extend my binary choice analysis to the class of Student-t link functions, which enables me to approximately regard the often-used probit and logit models as special cases. Unconditional estimates which average over competing models and integrate out model uncertainty are also obtained. Using NLSY data, I apply these methods and find that the link functions and estimated impacts of ability and family characteristics on the probabilities of enrolling in college are not constant across race and gender groups.
We describe procedures for Bayesian estimation and testing in cross-sectional, panel data and nonlinear smooth coefficient models. The smooth coefficient model is a generalization of the partially linear or additive model wherein coefficients on linear explanatory variables are treated as unknown functions of an observable covariate. In the approach we describe, points on the regression lines are regarded as unknown parameters and priors are placed on differences between adjacent points to introduce the potential for smoothing the curves. The algorithms we describe are quite simple to implement—for example, estimation, testing and smoothing parameter selection can be carried out analytically in the cross-sectional smooth coefficient model.We apply our methods using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Using the NLSY data we first explore the relationship between ability and log wages and flexibly model how returns to schooling vary with measured cognitive ability. We also examine a model of female labor supply and use this example to illustrate how the described techniques can been applied in nonlinear settings.
The roles of general cognitive ability (
g) and specific abilities or knowledge (
s) were investigated as predictors of work sample job performance criteria in 7 jobs for US Air Force enlistees. Both
g and
s (the interaction of general ability and experience) were defined by scores on the first and subsequent principal components of the enlistment selection and classification test (the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). Multiple regression analyses, when corrected for range restriction, revealed that
g was the best predictor of all criteria and that
s added a statistically significant but practically small amount to predictive efficiency. These results are consistent with those of previous studies, most notably Army Project A (J. J. McHenry et al; see record
1990-27146-001). The study also extends the findings to other jobs and uses traditionally more acceptable estimates of
g, application of effective sample size in cross-validation estimation, and new performance criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Latent variable models represent the joint distribution of observable variables in terms of a simple structure involving unobserved or latent variables, usually assuming the conditional independence of the observable variables given the latent variables. These models play an important role in educational measurement and psychometrics, in sociology and in population genetics, and are implicit in some work on systems reliability. We study a broad class of latent variable models, namely the monotone unidimensional models, in which the latent variable is a scalar, the observable variables are conditionally independent given the latent variable and the conditional distribution of the observables given the latent variable is stochastically increasing in the latent variable. All models in this class imply a new strong form of positive dependence among the observable variables, namely conditional (positive) association. This positive dependence condition may be used to test whether any model in this class can provide an adequate fit to observed data. Various applications, generalizations and a numerical example are discussed.
This paper examines the argument presented in The Bell Curve. A central argument is that one factor--g--accounts for correlation across test scores and performance in society. Another central argument is that g cannot be manipulated. These arguments are combined to claim that social policies designed to improve social performance cannot be effective. A reanalysis of the evidence contradicts this story. The factors that explain wages receive different weights than the factors that explain test scores. More than g is required to explain either. Other factors besides g contribute to social performance and they can be manipulated. Copyright 1995 by University of Chicago Press.
Over the 1980s, there were sharp increases in the return to schooling estimated with conventional wage regressions. The authors explore whether the relationship between ability and schooling changed over this period in ways that would have increased the schooling coefficient in these regressions. Their empirical results reject the hypothesis that an increase in the bias of the schooling coefficient, due to a change in the relationship between ability and schooling, has contributed to observed increases in the return to schooling. The authors also find that the increase in the schooling return has occurred for workers with relatively high levels of academic ability. Copyright 1993 by University of Chicago Press.
Chapter American polygeny and craniometry before Darwin : blacks and Indians as separate, inferior species
Notes in computer files
Entwicklung von Gc nach der Schule (S. 143, siehe auch Ackerman, 1996, 234f):
,
One must not forget that nine-tenths of generalizations and theorizing about intelligence and intelligence tests are based on observations in school (p. 142)
This book is about differences in intellectual capacity among people and groups and what those differences mean for America's future.(preface) The major purpose of this book] is to reveal the dramatic transformation that is currently in process in American society---a process that has created a new kind of class structure led by a "cognitive elite," itself a result of concentration and self-selection in those social pools well endowed with cognitive abilities. Herrnstein and Murray explore] the ways that low intelligence, independent of social, economic, or ethnic background, lies at the root of many of our social problems. The authors also demonstrate the truth of another taboo fact: that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)
This study was undertaken to learn more about the way in which the characteristics being measured by a test vary with the kind of examinee taking the test or with the problem‐solving style he uses in approaching test problems.
Briefly, the procedure for this study included the following steps:
(1) The subjects took 15 tests which would later be examined by factor analysis. (2) In order to find out what problem‐solving styles the subjects used, they were required to fill out a questionnaire about their background and their approach to test problems, and were interviewed while they solved items similar to ones they had faced on the tests. In all, more than 100 items of information about each subject were gathered. (3) As an aid in recognizing the important problem‐solving styles in these data, the intercorrelations of the interview, questionnaire, and test variables were factor analyzed. (4) These variables, after being grouped and selected by the factor analysis, were used to divide the subjects into 17 different pairs of subsamples representing different problem‐solving styles or different background characteristics that might be expected to affect the way in which a person solves problems. (5) All subsamples in the 17 pairs and also the whole group were then used in performing separate factor analyses of the same 15 tests, in all of which five factors were extracted and rotated. (6) Factor loadings and factor intercorrelations were compared for the two subsamples in each pair.
The problem‐solving approaches used for dividing many of the pairs of subsamples distinguished some kind of systematizing approach from a scanning approach. This is a distinction emphasized by Bloom and Broden and probably related to Gardner's Focusing vs. Scanning and Witkin's Analytic Attitude or Field‐Independence. While some of the divisions into pairs of subsamples revealed no substantial differences either in the loadings of the 15 tests on the five factors or in the intercorrelations of the factors, many interesting differences occurred. In particular the development of a systematic approach to solving the items of a test frequently reduced the loadings of that test on the factor which usually characterized it best. Also, for subjects using a systematic rather than an intuitive or scanning approach to test items, the space factor was usually found to be relatively less correlated with the verbal and mathematical factors and the verbal and mathematical factors were found to be more highly correlated with each other. An attempt is made to account for these findings psychologically by supposing that systematic persons develop specialized techniques for solving the visible, concrete spatial problems that are quite different from the symbolic techniques that they can use for solving problems in either of the symbolic areas, verbal and mathematics.
why are scores on various mental ability tests positively correlated
why do people differ in performance on such tests
factor analysis and the highest order factor / fluid and crystallized ability
size and invariance of g / practical external validity of g / task complexity and g (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The primary criterion of adequacy of a probabilistic causal analysis is that the causal variable should render the simultaneous phenomenological data conditionally independent. The intuition back of this idea is that the common cause of the phenomena should factor out the observed correlations. So we label the principle the common cause criterion. If we find that the barometric pressure and temperature are both dropping at the same time, we do not think of one as the cause of the other but look for a common dynamical cause within the physical theory of meteorology. If we find fever and headaches positively correlated, we look for a common disease as the source and do not consider one the cause of the other. But we do not want to suggest that satisfaction of this criterion is the end of the search for causes or probabilistic explanations. It does represent a significant and important milestone in any particular investigation.
The college wage premium for new labor market entrants rose sharply during the 1980s. We ask how much of this change arose from changes in the skill level of the typical college graduate. We find that skills attained prior to college, as measured by standardized test scores and high school grades, had no effect on the change in the college wage premium for men. In contrast, the returns to math ability rose considerably for women; failing to account for math skills thus substantially overstates the growth in the female college wage premium. Skills acquired in college, as reflected in the distribution of students across majors, had important effects on the relative wages of men. The trend away from low-skill subjects such as education and toward high-skill subjects such as engineering accounts for one-fourth of the rise in the male college wage premium.
This 1993 work surveys and summarizes the results of more than seventy years of investigation, by factor analysis, of a variety of cognitive abilities, with particular attention to language, thinking, memory, visual and auditory perception, creativity and the production of ideas, and the speed and accuracy of mental processing. The author describes his detailed findings resulting from reanalysis of more than 460 data sets from the factor-analytic literature, followed by a presentation of a hierarchical, three-stratum theory of cognitive ability and its implications for further research. A set of three computer disks (IBM 3-1/2" 1.4 megabytes, ASCII format) containing the numerical data sets and Dr. Carroll's statistical results is also available. Representing over 4 megabytes of data or roughly 2000 printed pages the disks are major resources for the interested researcher.
Using data from two longitudinal surveys of American high school seniors, the authors show that basic cognitive skills had a larger impact on wages for twenty-four-year-old men and women in 1986 than in 1978. For women, the increase in the return to cognitive skills between 1978 and 1986 accounts for all of the increase in the wage premium associated with postsecondary education. The authors also show that high school seniors' mastery of basic cognitive skills had a much smaller impact on wages two years after graduation than on wages six years after graduation. Copyright 1995 by MIT Press.
En este trabajo se estima la probabilidad de incumplimiento de las empresas, sus determinantes y el nivel de riesgo crediticio corporativo agregado del sistema financiero. Se utiliza un modelo logit ordenado generalizado con variables explicativas que contienen informaci�n a nivel de firmas y variables macroecon�micas que no han sido utilizadas en otros trabajos para Colombia, de tal manera que se puedan capturar los efectos que tiene la din�mica de la econom�a sobre la probabilidad de default, diferenciando por las categor�as de riesgo asociadas a los cr�ditos corporativos. Los resultados muestran que el conjunto de variables macroecon�micas mejora el poder explicativo del modelo, a la vez que se encuentra una alta persistencia en las categor�as asociadas con mayor riesgo crediticio.
This paper discusses the bias that results from using nonrandomly selected samples to estimate behavioral relationships as an ordinary specification error or "omitted variables" bias. A simple consistent two stage estimator is considered that enables analysts to utilize simple regression methods to estimate behavioral functions by least squares methods. The asymptotic distribution of the estimator is derived.
The Influence of Cognitive Psvcholo~Y on Testing and Measurement
- J Conoley
Conoley, and J. C. Dewitt (eds.) The Influence of Cognitive Psvcholo~Y on Testing and
Measurement, (Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates) 1987.
Career Decisions of Young Men, " unpublished manuscript
- Wolpin Keane
Keane, and Wolpin, " Career Decisions of Young Men, " unpublished manuscript, September
1994.
Measuring the Effects of Cognitive Ability Over Age and Time: A Nonparametric Approach
- John Cawley
- James Heckman
- Edward Vytlacil
Cawley, John, James Heckman, and Edward Vytlacil, " Measuring the Effects of Cognitive
Ability Over Age and Time: A Nonparametric Approach, " unpublished manuscript, University
of Chicago, 1996b.
- Jacob Mincer
Mincer, Jacob, Schooling. Experience. and Eamin~s. (New York: Columbia University Press),
1974.
Lessons From the Bell Curve StatisticalM odelsForD iscretePanelD ata Stmcmral Aflalysis of Discrete Dam
- James J Heckman
Heckman, James J., " Lessons From the Bell Curve, " Journal of Political Economy, October
1995.
, " StatisticalM odelsForD iscretePanelD ata ", in Charles Manskiand Daniel McFadden
(editors), Stmcmral Aflalysis of Discrete Dam, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 114-178.
The Dynamics of Educational Attainment For Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics Son of CTM: The DCPA Approach Based on Discrete Factor Structure Models
- Steven V Cameron
- James J Heckman
Cameron, Steven V, and James J. Heckman, " The Dynamics of Educational Attainment For
Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics, " unpublished manuscript, Department of Economics, University
of Chicago, 1992, revised 1996.
, " Son of CTM: The DCPA Approach Based on Discrete Factor Structure Models ",
unpublished manuscript, University of Chicago, 1987.
Log Wages are Linear in Normalized Test Scores: Anchoring The Evaluation of Educatioml Reforms in Reality
- John Cawley
- James Heckman
- Robert Meyer
Cawley, John, James Heckman and Robert Meyer, " Log Wages are Linear in Normalized Test
Scores: Anchoring The Evaluation of Educatioml Reforms in Reality ", unpublished manuscript,
University of Chicago, April, 1996.
Touics in Regression Analvsis
- Arthur Goldberger
Goldberger, Arthur, Touics in Regression Analvsis, McMillan, New York, 1986.
Ability, Human Capital, and Wages, unpublished manuscript
- J Cawley
- J J Heckman
- L Lochner
- E Vytlacil
- JJ Heckman