Study on bullying: The economic value of childhood socio-emotional skills

by Emilia Del Bono, Ben Etheridge, Paul Garcia

A large study of children’s progress into adulthood found that those who display bullying and aggressive behavior at school are more likely to prosper at work. The study also found that school bullies are more likely to abuse alcohol, smoke, break the law and suffer mental health problems in later life…

Abstract:
We investigate the relationship between child socio-emotional skills and labor market outcomes using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. We perform a novel factor analysis of child skills and capture four latent dimensions, representing ‘attention’, ‘conduct’, ‘emotional’, and ‘peers’ problems. Conditional on a range of confounding variables, we find that conduct problems, driven by aggression and impulsivity, are associated with positive outcomes in the labor market: higher wages, higher labor supply, sorting into ‘good’ jobs and higher productivity conditional on job tasks. Attention problems are instead negatively associated with labor market outcomes and this relationship is partially accounted for by schooling. We explore different mediating pathways, including through career interests, socialization and mental health – all measured in the adolescent period – but none of these is able to fully explain the association between child skills and later economic outcomes.

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