Mosca, Irene and McCrory, Cathal
(2016)
Personality and wealth accumulation among older couples: Do
dispositional characteristics pay dividends?
Journal of Economic Psychology, 56.
pp. 1-19.
Abstract
This paper explores whether the ‘Big 5’ personality characteristics: Emotional Stability,
Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience, contribute to
net household wealth accumulation among 1172 couple pairs (n = 2344) participating in
The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, independent of other socio-demographic and
human capital variables. We employ quantile regression to determine whether the effects
of personality vary at different levels of the conditional distribution of wealth. Results
reveal that the personality characteristics of the financial respondent to the survey are
more strongly associated with wealth than those of the non-financial respondent.
Specifically, we find that emotional stability and extraversion are positively associated
with wealth at the household level among spousal pairs. We also find that conscientiousness
is positively associated with wealth, but the relationship is only significant at the
lower end of the wealth continuum. In general, agreeableness and openness are negatively
associated with wealth although the relationships are non-significant. These findings indicate
that personality is an important factor shaping individuals’ consumption preferences
and financial decision-making behaviour over the life-course.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Personality traits;
Big five;
Non-cognitive traits;
Wealth accumulation;
Cohort study; Household Saving, Personal Finance;Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Social Sciences > Economics, Finance and Accounting |
| Item ID: |
11388 |
| Depositing User: |
Irene Mosca
|
| Date Deposited: |
21 Oct 2019 15:42 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Journal of Economic Psychology |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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