Heckman and Kautz 2012 - Hard Evidence on Soft Skills

Sep 18, 2026

Uploaded by Mabel

This paper reviews evidence on what standardized achievement tests measure and how those measurements relate to other proxies of cognitive ability such as IQ and grades. It argues that achievement tests fail to adequately capture “soft skills,” including personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences valued in labor markets and education. The analysis concludes that soft skills causally contribute to success in life, and that policies enhancing them belong in an effective public policy portfolio.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages14

Reading Time35 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

The role of standardized achievement tests

Cognitive ability measures and their limitations

What achievement tests miss about soft skills

Labour Economics 19 (2012) 451–464 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Labour Economics journal homepage: [www. else vier. com/locate/lab eco](www. else vier. com/locate/lab eco) | Hard evidence on soft skills ☆ James J. Heckman a, b, c,⁎, Tim Kautz a
a Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA b American Bar Foundation, 750 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60611, USAc University College Dublin, Ireland | | | | --- | --- | --- | | a r t i c l e i n f o | | a b s t r a c t | | Article history:
Received 10 May 2012
Accepted 13 May 2012
Available online 25 May 2012 | | This paper summarizes recent evidence on what achievement tests measure; how achievement tests relate to other measures of “cognitive ability” like IQ and grades; the important skills that achievement tests miss or mismeasure, and how much these skills matter in life.
Achievement tests miss, or perhaps more accurately, do not adequately capture, soft skills—personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences that are valued in the labor market, in school, and in many other domains. The larger message of this paper is that soft skills predict success in life, that they causally produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.
© 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. | | JEL classiﬁcation: I20
D01
Keywords: Personality Achievement tests IQ
Cognition | | | 1. Introduction Contemporary society places great value on standardized achievement tests to sift and sort people, to evaluate schools, and to assess the performance of nations. Admissions committees use tests like the SAT, the ACT, and the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) to screen applicants. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act stipulates that government-run schools must administer standardized achievement tests in order to be eligible for federal funding.1 The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) evaluates student ☆ This paper was presented as the Adam Smith Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the European Association of Labour Economists held in Cyprus, September 2011. This research was supported in part by the University of Chicago, A New Science of Virtues: A Project of the University of Chicago, the American Bar Foundation, a conference series from the Spencer Foundation, theJB & MK Pritzker Family Foundation, Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Geary Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland, NICHD R37 HD065072 and R01 HD054702, a European Research Council grant hosted by University College Dublin, DEVHEALTH 269874, a grant to the Becker Friedman Institute for Research and Economics from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and an anonymous funder. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funders or commentators mentioned here. We thank Linor Kiknadze for research assistance. Paul Devereux made helpful comments that are incorporated in this paper. ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Tel.: +1 773 702 0634; fax: +1 773 702 8490. E-mail addresses: [jjh@uchicago.edu](jjh@uchicago.edu) (J.J. Heckman), [tkautz@uchicago.edu](tkautz@uchicago.edu) (T. Kautz) 1 Sales of achievement tests have increased by nearly 400% between 1959 and 2005 (Digest of Education Statistics, various years; The Bowker Annual: Library and Book Trade Almanac, various years). performance in math, science, and reading across countries. The results attract media attention and inﬂuence policy. The year 2000 PISA test results caused Germany to re-evaluate its educational system and introduce a variety of educational reforms (Grek, 2009). Despite the widespread use of standardized achievement tests, the traits that they measure are not well-understo

FAQs

What does the paper say achievement tests measure well, and what they miss?

Achievement tests capture aspects of general achievement, but they do not adequately capture soft skills such as personality traits, goals, motivations, and preferences valued across school and the labor market.

How do achievement tests relate to IQ and grades according to the paper?

Achievement test scores, IQ scores, and grades are positively correlated, but the paper emphasizes that they measure different skills and rely on different facets of cognitive ability.

Why are soft skills important for life success in the paper?

Soft skills are argued to predict success in life and to causally produce that success, making programs that enhance them a key part of effective public policy.

Sep 18, 2026

Uploaded by Mabel

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