Does Personality Matter? Noncognitive Skills and the Male Migrant Wage Gap in Germany

Wage gaps between migrants and natives persist in Germany, and traditional human capital endowments or work environments only partially explain these gaps. This article investigates whether noncognitive skills contribute to explaining male migrant wage gaps in Germany. While the economics literature shows that noncognitive skills affect educational and occupational outcomes, such as gender wage gaps, it is unclear if the same applies to the migrant wage gap. To address this lingering question, we analyze risk preference and the “Big Five Personality Dimensions,” a psychological concept categorizing an individual's personality into five factors. In doing so, we show that male migrants and male German natives differ in their average noncognitive skills and that these skills significantly relate to wages. The results of Oaxaca–Blinder wage decompositions reveal that noncognitive skills significantly contribute six percentage points to explaining the male migrant wage gap in Germany. We conclude that noncognitive skills are important predictors of heterogeneities in labor market outcomes.

The effects of parenting on early adolescents’ noncognitive skills: Evidence from a sample of twins in Germany

Many theories in the social sciences assume that parenting affects child development. Previous research mostly supports the notion that parenting affects the skill development of children in early childhood. There are fewer studies testing whether parenting in early adolescence has such an influence. We estimate the effects of parenting on early adolescents’ noncognitive skills using data from the German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife). Specifically, we look at the effects of parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities on the academic self-concept, motivation, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control of 10 to 14 years old children. To control for unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality, we employ twin fixed-effects models combined with longitudinal information. In addition, MZ twin fixed effects models also control for genetic confounding. Our findings provide no support to the notion that parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities in early adolescence affect the development of children's noncognitive skills. We conclude that our results, in combination with the majority of evidence from previous research, are in line with a model according to which parenting has larger effects on the skill development of children in early childhood than in early adolescence.

COVID-19 within families amplifies the prosociality gap between adolescents of high and low socioeconomic status

COVID-19 has had worse health, education, and labor market effects on groups with low socioeconomic status (SES) than on those with high SES. Little is known, however, about whether COVID-19 has also had differential effects on noncognitive skills that are important for life outcomes. Using panel data from before and during the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 affects one key noncognitive skill, that is, prosociality. While prosociality is already lower for low-SES students prior to the pandemic, we show that COVID-19 infections within families amplify the prosociality gap between French high school students of high and low SES by almost tripling its size in comparison to pre–COVID-19 levels.