Does Schooling Causally Impact Non-Cognitive Skills? Evidence from Elimination of Social Security Student Benefits

Abstract

A limited number of studies have investigated the impacts of education on non-cognitive skills, yet they offer mixed results. A few studies suggest no impact, but others report positive impacts of education on non-cognitive skills. In this paper, we apply the elimination of Social Security student benefits that took place in the United States in 1982 to study the impacts of education on non-cognitive skills, as measured by the Rotter Locus of Control Scale and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. We apply eligibility for aid due to the death of father to avoid endogeneity in our analysis. Our results suggest that non-cognitive skills improve during the college education years, but the causality relationship from college education to non-cognitive skills disappears to a high extent when the prior levels of non-cognitive skills are controlled for.