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What Skills Can Buy: Transmission of advantage through cognitive and noncognitive skills.

ABSTRACT: Parental income and wealth contribute to children's success but are at least partly endogenous to parents' cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the degree to which mothers' skills measured in early adulthood confound the relationship between their economic resources and their children's postsecondary education outcomes. Analyses of NLSY79 suggest that maternal cognitive and noncognitive skills attenuate half of parental income's association with child baccalaureate college attendance, a fifth of its association with elite college attendance, and a quarter of its association with bachelor's degree completion. Maternal skills likewise attenuate a third of parental wealth's association with children's baccalaureate college attendance, half of its association with elite college attendance, and a fifth of its association with bachelor's degree completion. Observational studies of the relationship between parents' economic resources and children's postsecondary attainments that fail to account for parental skills risk seriously overstating the benefits of parental income and wealth.

SUBMITTER: Doren C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5358666 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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What Skills Can Buy: Transmission of advantage through cognitive and noncognitive skills.

Doren Catherine C Grodsky Eric E

Sociology of education 20160927 4

Parental income and wealth contribute to children's success but are at least partly endogenous to parents' cognitive and noncognitive skills. We estimate the degree to which mothers' skills measured in early adulthood confound the relationship between their economic resources and their children's postsecondary education outcomes. Analyses of NLSY79 suggest that maternal cognitive and noncognitive skills attenuate half of parental income's association with child baccalaureate college attendance, ...[more]

PMID: 28337046

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Project description:Importance:Noncognitive life skills are patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that complement cognitive ability in promoting positive economic and educational outcomes. These positive attributes have been associated with favorable social and health outcomes at older ages, but their combined association with survival is not known. Objectives:To evaluate the association of the combination of 5 noncognitive life skills with mortality, and to explore the role of sociodemographic, health, cognitive, and behavioral factors in explaining associations. Design, Setting, and Participants:This cohort study used data from wave 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, conducted in 2010. Participants included adults 52 years and older. Associations of scores on 5 noncognitive life skills, including conscientiousness, perseverance, emotional stability, optimism, and control, with all-cause mortality were analyzed for a mean (SD) of 7.2 (1.3) years. Data analyses were completed in November 2019. Exposures:Response to wave 5 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Main Outcomes and Measures:Noncognitive life skills scores, including conscientiousness, perseverance, emotional stability, optimism, and control, were measured by questionnaire. The main outcome was all-cause mortality, and the associations with noncognitive life skills scores were analyzed using Cox proportional hazards regressions models to estimate hazard ratios per 1-SD increase in score. Results:A total of 7850 participants (mean [SD] age, 66.5 [9.0] years; 4333 [55.2%] women) were included. Combined life skill score was positively associated with survival, with a hazard ratio of 0.81 (95% CI, 0.72-0.90) per 1-SD increase in positive attributes after adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, childhood socioeconomic status, educational attainment, baseline chronic disease, depressive symptoms, cognitive function, mobility impairment, social isolation, smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, and fruit and vegetable consumption (P?<?.001). Excluding deaths during 24 months after baseline as a check for reverse causation showed the same pattern (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.70-0.89; P?<?.001). Associations were maintained after each life skill was omitted in turn from the aggregate score, indicating that no single positive attribute accounted for the protective association. Conclusions and Relevance:These findings suggest that noncognitive life skills are associated with survival at older ages. Whether training and education programs could enhance these attributes and influence mortality risk is not known, but fostering and maintaining life skills may be important in later life.

Dataset Information

What Skills Can Buy: Transmission of advantage through cognitive and noncognitive skills.

Publications

What Skills Can Buy: Transmission of advantage through cognitive and noncognitive skills.

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