• Newsroom
  • World of Labor
  • G²LM|LIC
  • IDSC
  • Login
  • EN
  • Über uns
    Überblick Mission und Vision Organisation Initiativen und Projekte Auszeichnungen Historie
  • Team
    Überblick Forschungsteam Service Unit Associated Members Gastforschende Alumni
  • Netzwerk
    Überblick Research Fellows Research Affiliates Network Advisory Panel
  • Publikationen
    Überblick Discussion Papers World of Labor Policy Papers Standpunkte Gutachten Research in Labor Economics Bücher
  • Events
    Überblick Veranstaltungskalender Forschungsseminare Konferenzen und Workshops IZA Summer School
  • Startseite
  • Publikationen
  • IZA Discussion Papers
  • Students' Grit and Their Post-compulsory Educational Choices and Trajectories: E...

April 2024

IZA DP No. 16945: Students' Grit and Their Post-compulsory Educational Choices and Trajectories: Evidence from Switzerland

Janine Albiez, Maurizio Strazzeri, Stefan C. Wolter

published online in: , 16 September 2025

We examine the association between the personality trait grit and post-compulsory educational choices and trajectories using a large survey linked to administrative student register data. Exploiting cross sectional variation in students' self-reported grit in the last year of compulsory school, we find that an increase in students' grit is associated with a higher likelihood to start a vocational education instead of a general education. This association is robust to the inclusion of cognitive skill measures and a comprehensive set of other students' background characteristics. Moreover, using novel data on skill requirements of around 240 vocational training occupations, we find that grittier vocational education students sort into math-intensive training occupations. Similarly, students in general education with more grit select themselves more often into the math-intensive track. Finally, we do not find evidence that students with a higher grit have lower dropout rates in post-compulsory education.

Download

Keywords

  • grit
  • personality traits
  • non-cognitive skills
  • educational choices

JEL Codes

  • D01
  • I20
Impressum
Datenschutz
Code of Conduct
Status
© 2025 Deutsche Post STIFTUNG
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings

These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.

cb-enable
Dieses Cookie speichert den Status der Cookie-Einwilligung des Benutzers für die aktuelle Domain. Expiry: 1 Year
laravel_session
Session ID um den Nutzer beim Neuladen wiederzuerkennen und seinen Login Status wiederherzustellen. Expiry 2 Hours
XSRF-TOKEN
CSRF-Schutz für Formulare. Expirey: 2 Hours

In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.

ga
Google Analytics
Imprint | Privacy Policy
EN