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 affcting the change in socioeconomic status among generations. This empirical study identifis 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 diffrent programs at the National Economics University (NEU). The estimation results indicate that besides education, most traits, among the big fie traits, except openness and neuroticism, have signifiant positive effcts on socioeconomic mobility. Furthermore, since values are considered to be behavioral manifestations of personality, we take into account the interactive effcts of personality traits and personal values on socioeconomic mobility. It is interesting that we found many signifiant relations of personality-value interaction to socioeconomic mobility between generations. Additionally, gender inequality and the urbanrural gap are also illustrated in individuals’ socioeconomic positions.