Citation
Cabane, Charlotte & Clark, Andrew E. (2010). Childhood sporting activities and adult labour-market outcomes. 2010 Add Health Users Conference. Bethesda, MD: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center.Abstract
It is known that non-cognitive skills (NCS) are an important determinant of success in life. However, their returns are not simple to measure and, as a result, only relatively few studies have dealt with this empirical question. We consider sports participation while at school as one way of improving or signalling the individual’s NCS endowment. We use four waves of Add Health data to see how sports participation by schoolchildren translates into labour-market success. We specifically test the hypotheses that participation in different types of sports at school leads to, ceteris paribus, very different types of jobs and labour-market insertion in general when adult. We consider four different indicators of labour-market success: managerial responsibilities; the freedom to make important decisions in one’s job; the place that the current job holds in the individual’s career plan; and physical work conditions. We take seriously the issue of endogeneity of sporting activities (whereby, for example, richer students may have better access to sporting facilities, and better opportunities on the labour market) in order to tease out a causal relationship between childhood sporting activity and adult labour market success. As such, we contribute to the literature on the returns to NCS.URL
https://addhealth.cpc.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/docs/news/FINAL%202010%20Add%20Health%20Users%20Conference%20Abstracts.pdfReference Type
Conference proceedingBook Title
2010 Add Health Users ConferenceAuthor(s)
Cabane, CharlotteClark, Andrew E.