Socioemotional Skills, Education, and Health-Related Outcomes of High-Ability Individuals

We use the high-IQ Terman sample to estimate relationships between education, socioemotional skills, and health-related outcomes that include health behaviors, lifestyles, and health measures across the life cycle. By both focusing on a high-IQ sample and controlling for IQ in regression models, we mitigate ability bias due to cognitive skill. In addition, we control for detailed personality measures to account for socioemotional skills. We model skills using factor analysis to address measurement error and adopt a powerful stepdown procedure to account for multiple hypothesis testing. We find that among high-IQ subjects, education is linked to better health-related outcomes, in contrast to previous evidence. Conscientiousness, Openness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism are linked to various health-related outcomes across the lifecycle. Furthermore, we find that accounting for a comprehensive set of skills, measurement error, and multiple hypothesis testing not only provides greater confidence in several established relationships but also generates novel results

Peer Effects and Recidivism: The Role of Race and Age

Recidivism rates are a growing concern due to the high cost of imprisonment and the high rate of ex-prisoners returning back to prison. One policy-relevant and potentially important determinant of recidivism is the composition of peer inmates. In this paper, we study the role of peer effects within a correctional facility using data on almost 80,000 individuals serving time in Georgia. We exploit randomness in peer-composition over time within prisons to identify effects of peers on recidivism rates. We find no evidence of peer effects for property or drug-related crimes in the general prison population. However, we find strong peer effects when we define peer groups by race and age. Our findings indicate that homophily plays a large part in determining the strength of peer exposure among prisoners in the same facility. These results suggest that prison assignments can be used to reduce recidivism for particular groups of prisoners. (JEL K14, K40)

Psychological Skills, Education, and Longevity of High-Ability Individuals." Unpublished manuscript

Abstract Based on the 1922-1991 Terman data of children with high ability, I investigate the effects of childhood psychological skills and post-compulsory education on longevity. I identify causal effects and account for measurement error using factor-analytic methodolog