The Math-Verbal Divide: Unequal Returns to Cognitive Skills in Education and Work

We use population-level administrative data covering secondary school students in England to study how mathematical and verbal skills shape education and labour market outcomes. Following cohorts completing national exams at age 16 through higher education and into employment until age 34, we show that mathematics and verbal skills operate through fundamentally different pathways. Verbal skills strongly predict educational attainment — including college enrolment, graduation, and postgraduate study — while mathematics skills generate substantially larger earnings returns. At ages 30–34, moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the mathematics skill distribution is associated with 29% higher earnings, compared with 14% for verbal. This divergence operates partly through field-of-study choice: individuals with stronger verbal skills disproportionately select into fields with higher graduation rates but lower earnings returns, while those with stronger mathematics skills enter STEM and other high-paying majors. Gender differences in skills explain the female advantage in college attendance and part of the STEM gap but have little effect on the gender earnings gap due to offsetting effects across these pathways: women's verbal advantage facilitates educational access but also steers them toward lower-return fields.