Children’s personality and its contribution to school grades inequality: Evidence from Mexico

Alfonso Miranda (Lead / Corresponding author), Yahaira Rodríguez-Martínez, Yu Zhu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We explore the relationship between Big-5 Personality Traits and school grades, using a novel survey of state primary school children in Mexico. Linear school fixed effects estimates controlling for household income, principal carer’s education, IQ and personality traits, indicate that higher conscientiousness and agreeableness consistently and significantly correlate with high school performance in all subjects, net of child’s IQ. A regression-based inequality decomposition shows that a child’s personality accounts for 5.1% and 6.5% of the inequality in mathematics for girls and boys; while for Spanish it accounts for 3.9% and 8.0%, respectively. Results are robust to unobservable confounders using Oster (2019) bounds.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages7
JournalBulletin of Economic Research
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • Big-5 personality traits
  • Mexico
  • school achievement

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