Abstract:
In an extensive review of wage determination papers, it is concluded that the standard demographic
and human capital factors explain little of earning differentials. Consequently, there is a growing inter est among economists to include non-cognitive skills measured by personality traits in recent empirical
literature to explain variations in earnings. In a bid to contribute empirical evidence to this strand of lit erature, this study examines the associations between the Big-Five personality traits (i.e., agreeableness,
conscientiousness, openness, extraversion and neuroticism) and earnings, using the World Bank’s Skills
towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) data on Ghana. The study employed regression tech niques to estimate a series of semi-logarithmic wage equations that include demographic and human
capital factors and the Big-Five personality traits to determine how important these factors are in
explaining wage and self-employment earnings. Furthermore, the estimations of the wage equations are
done separately for males and females to highlight any gender differences in the way personality traits
contribute to earnings. Findings are largely consistent with the literature but uniquely demonstrate
that in a power-distant culture like Ghana, where, traditionally, girl-child education has been relegated
to the background, agreeable females, and not males, are rewarded in the formal wage employment
labour market. However, in the informal self-employment labour market, conscientious males, and not
females, are positively rewarded with higher earnings. These unique findings contribute to our under standing of the gender differences in the relative importance of non-cognitive skills in the formal and
informal labour markets.
