Personality, Value, and Intergenerational Socioeconomic Mobility: Evidence from Vietnam

Abstract:Intergenerational socioeconomic mobility is often attributed to cognitive factors like education, IQs, and heritability. Personality and values are believed to be heritable and stable over time, thus affecting the change in socioeconomic status among generations. This empirical study identifies the role of personality, values, and the interaction between them on the disparity in socioeconomic status between parents and children in Vietnam. Our research is based on a randomly-sampled survey of 450 students in different programs at the National Economics University (NEU). The estimation results indicate that besides education, most traits, among the big five traits, except openness and neuroticism, have significant positive effects on socioeconomic mobility. Furthermore, since values are considered to be behavioral manifestations of personality, we take into account the interactive effects of personality traits and personal values on socioeconomic mobility. It is interesting that we found many significant relations of personality-value interaction to socioeconomic mobility between generations. Additionally, gender inequality and the urbanrural gap are also illustrated in individuals’ socioeconomic positions.