The Effect of the Fall of the Berlin Wall on Children’s Noncognitive Skills

The noncognitive skill of conscientiousness has been linked to favorable labor market and health outcomes. But how is conscientiousness affected by events that happen in childhood? We investigate the effects of negative parental selection and economic and social upheaval on conscientiousness in adulthood using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Our identification strategy exploits the steep drop in fertility that occurred in the former East Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the socialist regime. Using an event study analysis and a difference-in-differences estimator with the former West Germany as a control group, we find that women conceived in East Germany in the three-year period following the fall the Berlin Wall are less conscientious as adults than women born after this period and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In light of the findings by Chevalier and Marie (2017) that parents who had children coinciding with this collapse in fertility were negatively selected, we interpret our findings as evidence of a detrimental effect of negative parental selection on women's conscientiousness. In contrast, we find no effects of negative parental selection on the conscientiousness of men