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Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period, and Cohort Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Fitzenberger, Bernd

    (HU Berlin)

  • Mena, Gary

    (HU Berlin)

  • Nimczik, Jan

    (ESMT Berlin)

  • Sunde, Uwe

    (LMU Munich)

Abstract

Despite the importance for socio-economic outcomes, there is an ongoing debate about the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. By disentangling age, period and cohort influences on personality traits, this paper adds to the existing empirical contributions, which often focus on age patterns and disregard cohort and period influences. We present the results from systematic specification tests that provide novel evidence for the separability of age, period, and cohort effects in almost all personality traits. Our estimates also document that for different cohorts, the evolution of personality traits across the life-cycle follows a stable, though non-constant, age-profile, while there are sizeable differences across time periods.

Suggested Citation

  • Fitzenberger, Bernd & Mena, Gary & Nimczik, Jan & Sunde, Uwe, 2019. "Personality Traits Across the Life Cycle: Disentangling Age, Period, and Cohort Effects," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 214, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:214
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    2. Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. & Lepinteur, Anthony & Menta, Giorgia, 2025. "The Stability of Self-Control in Unstable Times," IZA Discussion Papers 18270, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Andrew E Clark & Rong Zhu, 2024. "Taking Back Control? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Retirement on Locus of Control," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1465-1493.
    4. Cheng, Lingguo & Lu, Yunfeng, 2024. "Risk attitudes across the life course: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    5. Gast'on P. Fern'andez, 2023. "Does personality affect the allocation of resources within households?," Papers 2307.02918, arXiv.org.
    6. Haylock, Michael & Kampkötter, Patrick & Kosfeld, Michael & Von Siemens, Ferdinand, 2023. "Helping and Antisocial Behavior in the Workplace," CEPR Discussion Papers 18154, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Sunde, Uwe, 2023. "Age, longevity, and preferences," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    8. Kemper, Johanna & Renold, Ursula, 2024. "Evaluating the impact of general versus vocational education on labor market outcomes in Egypt by means of a regression discontinuity design," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Rainer Kotschy & Uwe Sunde, 2025. "Gender Gaps in Patience, Risk-Taking, Trust, and Prosociality Have Declined Across Birth Cohorts," CESifo Working Paper Series 12173, CESifo.
    10. Murray, Neil & Neyse, Levent & Schröder, Carsten, 2023. "Changes in risk attitudes vary across domains throughout the life course," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 534-563.
    11. Bietenbeck, Jan & Sunde, Uwe & Thiemann, Petra, 2025. "Recession experiences during early adulthood shape prosocial attitudes later in life," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    12. McKercher, Bob, 2023. "Age or generation? Understanding behaviour differences," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    13. Gaston P. Fernandez & Mariia Kovaleva, 2024. "Personality Traits, the Marriage Market, and Household Behavior," Working Papers ECARES 2024-21, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    14. Sunde, Uwe & Kotschy, Rainer, 2022. "Does Demography Determine Democratic Attitudes?," CEPR Discussion Papers 17624, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Islam Md Tawhidul & Kenta Tanaka & Koji Kotani, 2025. "Sharing Information and Threshold Ambiguity in Public Bads Prevention," World, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-17, January.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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