Workers’ Non-cognitive Skills And Wage Earnings

Faced with intensive technological changes,complex work environments and closer interpersonal needs,the non-cognitive ability of workers has been paid more and more attention by the market.First,the measurement of non-cognitive ability.Based on data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies(CFPS)between 2010 and 2014,this paper constructs non-cognitive skills based on the “Big Five” personality index,making sure that there are at least two questions involved in each dimension of non-cognitive skills.Five sub-indicators of non-cognitive skills involve 18 questions,reducing the measurement error of non-cognitive skills.In order to eliminate the dimensional differences among variables,all sub-indicators were standardized and synthesized into the total non-cognitive skill indicator by principal component analysis.Then,we explore the effect of such skills on labourers’ wages.The results are as follows: Firstly,using OLS regression directly,the non-cognitive skills have a significant positive effect on labourers’ wage earnings.By the way of quantile regression,it shows that the influence of non-cognitive skills on wage earnings declines with the increase in the income quantile.Comparing earnings and profitability inherent in the non-cognitive skills of men and women,it is significant that women’s non-cognitive skills have a greater impact on their individual earnings.Secondly,considering the endogenous problem,this paper not only uses wage income of workers in 2012 or 2014 as the explanatory variable,non-cognitive ability in 2010 as the explanatory variable,but also chooses average non-cognitive ability in occupations as the instrumental variable of individual non-cognitive ability,and uses 2SLS to regress.The results are still the same.When considering the self-selection problem,this paper uses the processing effect model and the propensity score matching method to estimate,and the results are still robust.Finally,this paper explores the social capital effect of non-cognitive ability on workers’ wage income through the intermediary effect,and finds that social capital is a part of intermediary factor between non-cognitive ability and workers’ wage income.By comparing and analyzing the marginal effect of education between groups,it is found that the improvement of non-cognitive ability not only helps to accumulate itself,but also helps to improve the return on investment in education.The probit model is used to analyze the occupational screening effect,which shows that the higher the non-cognitive ability is,the greater the probability of becoming a white-collar worker,thereby increasing the wage income of workers.