IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/nwuipr/96-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Vim Will Win: Long-Run Effects of Motivation and Other "Noncognitive" Traits on Success

Author

Listed:
  • Greg J. Duncan
  • Rachel Dunifon
  • Dave Knutson

Abstract

The impact on success of motivation, risk aversion, social capital, and a host of other "noncognitive" characteristics is assessed using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Our intragenerational analysis uses a sample of men first observed in their 20s, and relates these traits to labor-market attainments measured 15-25 years later. Our intergenerational analysis uses a sample of men first observed in their 30s and relates these traits to the completed schooling of their children. In contrast to most previous work with these data, we find considerable analytic power for a number of traits, which, if anything, increases with the measurement interval between the traits and subsequent earnings. Taken together, our motivational measures are as powerful in accounting for future labor-market success than either completed schooling or an admittedly crude measure of cognitive skills. A very different set of traits, including church attendance and savings, predict intergenerational "success."

Suggested Citation

  • Greg J. Duncan & Rachel Dunifon & Dave Knutson, "undated". "Vim Will Win: Long-Run Effects of Motivation and Other "Noncognitive" Traits on Success," IPR working papers 96-23, Institute for Policy Resarch at Northwestern University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:nwuipr:96-23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. R. Plotnick & M. Klawitter & M. Edwards, "undated". "Do Attitudes and Personality Characteristics Affect Socioeconomic Outcomes? The Case of Welfare Use by Young Women," Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Papers 1161-98, University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:nwuipr:96-23. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ipnwuus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.