Institutions, parental selection, and locus of control

ABSTRACT

Locus of control, that is, people’s perception of how much influence they have over their lives, is an important predictor for economic outcomes – earnings, health and education, to name a few. This article uses difference-in-differences analysis to investigate the importance of the institutional environment for the development of locus of control, using the fall of the Berlin Wall as exogenous shock to the educational system in East Germany. Using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP), we find that women showed less external locus of control following the fall of the Berlin Wall but less clear results for men.

KEYWORDS:

• Locus of control
• socialism
• gender
• the fall of the Berlin Wall
• SOEP

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D91
• I21
• P36

Acknowledgements

Kleinjans would like to thank Marco Caliendo at the University of Potsdam and Carsten Schroeder at the DIW for hosting her during the 2015–2016 academic year and the staff at the DIW for help with the SOEP data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Bundeszentrale fuer Politische Bildung, 3 June 2013, http://www.bpb.de/nachschlagen/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situation-in-deutschland/162491/ausgewaehlte-arbeitslosenquoten-ii, accessed 8/20/2017.

² Own calculations based on data from the 1990 and 1994 Familiensurvey of the Deutsches Jugendinstitut.