Session: Education, Skills and Labour Market Returns
Adolescent Core Self-Evaluation and Adult Interpersonal Trust: Evidence from the 1970 British Cohort Study (Anna Adamecz, UCL Institute of Education)
This paper investigates whether adolescents’ core self-evaluation (CSE), a broad personality construct capturing individuals’ appraisal of their self-worth and capabilities, predicts interpersonal trust decades later. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from the BCS70, we construct CSE measures from self-esteem, locus of control, and emotional stability at age 16 and examine their relationship with trust reported at ages 34, 42, 46, and 50. We find that higher adolescent CSE is positively associated with greater trust in others later in life. The estimated associations are comparable in magnitude to those between trust and cognitive ability. They are stable over time and are not explained by selection to the sample, educational attainment, labor market success, or family formation. These findings underscore the long-term social relevance of core self-evaluation.
Explaining Human Capital Inequalities: Evidence from Millennium Cohort Study and Linked Education Data (Habtamu Beshir, UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies)
In this study, we examine the evolution of achievement gaps by socioeconomic background at ages 7, 11, and 16. We then investigate the extent to which parental time investments, children’s own time use, and school quality contribute to these disparities. Our findings reveal substantial differences in attainment between children from more and less advantaged backgrounds, with evidence that the gap widens as pupils progress through school. We extend the analysis to post-secondary outcomes using recent MCS data at age 23. The results indicate significant socioeconomic gaps in higher education participation, progression to selective universities, and engagement in postgraduate study. Our decomposition analysis shows that prior attainment, school quality, and educational aspirations play key roles in explaining these inequalities.
Qualification Mismatch Across the Career: Evidence on Persistence and Consequences from the Next Steps Cohort (Golo Henseke, UCL Institute of Education)
Qualification mismatch, holding qualifications exceeding job requirements, affects over half of employed young adults in England, yet little is known about its persistence beyond graduates. Using the Next Steps cohort (born 1989-90), we track 4,075 workers from age 25 to 32. Mismatch is highly persistent: 72% of those overqualified at 25 remain so at 32. Controlling for parental background, education, school engagement, and psychological traits attenuates persistence by only 18%, pointing to structural rather than individual drivers. Formal sensitivity analysis confirms robustness to unobserved confounding and occupation-based mismatch measures. Gaining a higher qualification between sweeps reduces persistence by 7.8 percentage points, while motherhood increases it for women by 7.7 pp. Persistent mismatch carries material costs: 14% lower wages and 8 pp lower homeownership at 32. The findings suggest mismatch is a sticky condition for this cohort, not a transitory labour market friction.
The labour market returns to graduation: reconciling administrative and survey data estimates (Matt Dickson, University of Bath)
This paper contributes to the literature on the earnings returns to university graduation. Recent evidence using administrative earnings data from England suggests a zero return to graduation for men and positive returns to graduation for women in annual earnings at age 26. We show that once hours worked are taken into account – typically not available in administrative tax data – returns to graduation in hourly wages are considerably smaller for women than returns in annual wages at this age. Graduate women work more hours than comparable non-graduate women; thus, not taking hours worked into account leads to overestimating returns to graduation for women by more than two-fold. This highlights the importance of using both survey and administrative data sources when estimating the returns to university graduation.
Extrapolating childhood policy effects to young adulthood: Extending LifeSim Childhood to age 23 (Shrathinth Venkatesh, University of York)
LifeSim Childhood is a microsimulation model built on MCS data that estimates the long-term consequences of childhood interventions up to age 17. Using recently released data on the MCS age 23 sweep we extend this existing model to age 23. This allows us to capture numerous important outcomes during this important period of skills development and transition to the labour market, including two standard human capital outcomes with well-documented causal effects on later life outcomes: not in employment, education or training (NEET) and university degree. To illustrate this extension we use the updated model to estimate the effect of an increase in household income during the early years (age 0 to 5) on long-term outcomes up to age 23.
