Schooling and self-control

Melbourne Institute Working Paper No. 02/24

Date: March 2024

Author(s):

Deborah A. Cobb-Clark
Sarah C. Dahmann
Daniel A. Kamhöfer
Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch

Abstract

While there is an established positive relationship between self-control and education, the direction of causality remains a matter of debate. We make a contribution to resolving this issue by exploiting a series of Australian and German educational reforms that increased minimum education requirements as a source of exogenous variation in education levels. Instrumental variables estimates suggest that, for people affected by the reforms, an additional year of schooling has no effect on self-control.

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