We use a large, nationally-representative sample of working-age adults to demonstrate that personality (as measured by the Big Five) is stable over a four-year period. Average personality changes are small and do not vary substantially across age groups. Intra-individual personality change is...

This paper analyzes the relationship between individuals' locus of control and their decisions to exercise regularly, eat well, drink moderately, and avoid tobacco. Our primary goal is to assess the relative importance of the alternative pathways that potentially link locus of control to healthy...

Empirical studies of the role of non-cognitive skills in driving economic behavior often rely heavily on the assumption that these skills are stable over the relevant time frame. We analyze the change in a specific non-cognitive skill, i.e. locus of control, in order to directly assess the...

We analyze the impact of a recent initiative by the Australian Government to reduce disadvantage and improve children's welfare in Aboriginal communities. The policy – known as income management – quarantines 50 percent of welfare payments to be spent on priority goods (e.g., food, housing,...

We test whether adverse childhood experiences – exposure to parental maltreatment and its indirect effect on health – are associated with age 30 personality traits. We use rich longitudinal data from a large, representative cohort of young US Americans and exploit differences across siblings...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Australian Baby Bonus – a Jason Gaitz one-off cash transfer – on various aspects of child human capital development. Using high-quality longitudinal cohort data and difference-in-difference models, we compare the outcomes of cohort members whose younger...

Cognitive and non-cognitive skills are important determinants of labor market outcomes, but are often unobserved. We propose a proxy for these skills derived from item non-response information and a procedure to test its validity. Exploiting a unique data-collection feature of an Australian...

Internal locus of control (LOC) is a highly beneficial non-cognitive skill, yet its long-term formation process remains poorly understood. Using British cohort data, we examine the role that fathers play in LOC maturation from childhood into middle age; a machine-learning algorithm is used to...

Over the past two decades, researchers have shown a growing interest in the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – children's confrontation with maltreatment and household dysfunction – in shaping lifetime opportunities. However, this is the first study to quantify the economic...

We develop and test an economic model of the cognitive and non-cognitive foundations of survey item- response behavior. We show that a summary measure of response behaviour – the survey item-response rate (SIRR) – varies with cognitive and less so with non-cognitive abilities, has a strong...