Children with better self-control are less likely to be unemployed, study finds

Study over four decades showed worse results for the easily distracted during a recession

The researchers then compared that data to the participants’ employment record from 1986 to 2008 and found that up to the age of 38, those who had low self-control as children had 1.6 as many months of unemployment as those with high self-control (PA)

Benjamin Franklin once said that if we educated young people to exercise self-control, we’d go a long way to improving society for everyone. A new study proves he might be right: our ability to manage our impulses can affect our chances of employment in later life – especially during time of economic stress.

A study spanning four decades took results from two large, diverse groups of British citizens to find that those who had trouble with self-control had more difficulties finding and keeping a job – even after variations in intelligence, class and health were accounted for.

The team led by Michael Daly, a behavioural scientist from the University of Stirling, used two sets of data to prove the link. In the first, children aged 10 were rated by teachers on how well they paid attention in school, whether they got distracted and whether they kept their nerve long enough to complete tasks. Some 17,000 children participated as part of a wider British Cohort Study, that tracked children born in one week in 1970.

The researchers then compared that data to the participants’ employment record from 1986 to 2008 and found that up to the age of 38, those who had low self-control as children had 1.6 as many months of unemployment as those with high self-control.

A second study enhanced the findings. A similar sized cohort of 17,638 children born in Brtiain in March 1958 were enrolled in the British National Child Development Study and had their self-control measured at ages seven and 11.

By their mid-twenties, those that scored lower on self-control had significantly higher levels of unemployment, which accumulated throughout their working life. By analysing data from before and after the recession of the 1980s, Daly and his team discovered that those with poor self –control suffered greater unemployment during the recession.

“Low childhood self-control predicted unemployment in adulthood, even decades later at age 50,” Daly said in the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science.