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You’ve earned it: estimating the impact of human capital on social preferences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Pamela Jakiela ,
Edward Miguel  and
Vera L. te Velde
Pamela Jakiela*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Edward Miguel*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Vera L. te Velde*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
*
pjakiela@umd.edu
emiguel@econ.berkeley.edu
vtevelde@econ.berkeley.edu
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Abstract

We combine data from a randomized evaluation and a laboratory experiment to measure the causal impact of human capital on respect for earned property rights, a component of social preferences with important implications for economic growth and development. We find that higher academic achievement reduces the willingness of young Kenyan women to appropriate others’ labor income, and shifts players toward a 50–50 split norm in a modified dictator game. This study demonstrates that education may have long-run impacts on social preferences, norms and institutions beyond the human capital directly produced.

Keywords

Social preferencesEducationExperiment
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 385 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-014-9409-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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