The capacity for self-control may underlie successful labor-force entry and job retention, particularly in times of economic uncertainty. Analyzing unemployment data from two nationally representative British cohorts ( N = 16,780), we found that low self-control in childhood was associated with the emergence and persistence of unemployment across four decades. On average, a 1- SD increase in self-control was associated with a reduction in the probability of unemployment of 1.4 percentage points after adjustment for intelligence, social class, and gender. From labor-market entry to middle age, individuals with low self-control experienced 1.6 times as many months of unemployment as those with high self-control. Analysis of monthly unemployment data before and during the 1980s recession showed that individuals with low self-control experienced the greatest increases in unemployment during the recession. Our results underscore the critical role of self-control in shaping life-span trajectories of occupational success and in affecting how macroeconomic conditions affect unemployment levels in the population.

Self-control is one of the most useful human capabilities and has important implications for career success. Challenging work environments require employees to successfully inhibit their impulses and control their emotional expression in order to meet deadlines and avoid potential conflicts with customers and colleagues. Self-control may also enable workers to resist conflicting but desirable activities (e.g., leisure activities or sleep), minimize distractions, and form adaptive routines, thus facilitating the completion of demanding tasks and management of substantial workloads (de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok, & Baumeister, 2012; Ent, Baumeister, & Tice, 2015; Hofmann, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2012; Schmidt, Hupke, & Diestel, 2012). Indeed, hard work is almost synonymous with self-control, as workers need to exert effort today to achieve valuable future benefits in the form of paychecks, bonuses, and promotions (Kaur, Kremer, & Mullainathan, 2010).

The research we report here builds on an emerging psychological literature demonstrating a close relationship between self-control and work performance and other work-related outcomes, including income and occupational prestige (de Ridder et al., 2012; Moffitt et al., 2011; Schmidt et al., 2012). Given these findings, it is somewhat surprising that self-control has not yet been linked to unemployment, a substantial global problem with vast consequences for people’s welfare. Using longitudinal data from two ongoing studies of British cohorts, we examined the extent to which self-control during childhood predicts spells of unemployment and the total amount of time people are unemployed throughout their working lives. To test whether adverse economic conditions may amplify the influence of self-control, we tracked unemployment outcomes as the United Kingdom entered the early-1980s recession.

Childhood Self-Control and Unemployment Self-control seems to be a highly plausible mechanism for attaining and retaining employment. Academic success has already been linked to good self-control, presumably because it facilitates concentration on studies and resistance to distracting temptations (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). Self-control is also potentially valuable during the job-search process, which can be arduous and time-consuming. Individuals with lower self-control may be more likely to succumb to tempting or distracting alternatives and disengage from their search sooner (Ent et al., 2015; Kanfer, Wanberg, & Kantrowitz, 2001). Finally, a person with high self-control who is already employed may draw on these reserves to meet deadlines, arrive punctually, tolerate difficult customers, and so on (Schmidt et al., 2012). In school and the workplace, the advantage will lie with people who are better able to inhibit a preference for leisure, concentrate on their work, and regulate their emotions in favor of their education or career goals. We hypothesized that the importance of self-control for successful entry into employment and for job retention is particularly pronounced in times of economic recession. During such periods, the returns to self-control are potentially highest, as the effort that needs to be devoted to job search increases. Employers may place a greater emphasis on self-control through processes such as internships, which make it possible to explicitly assess key skills like time management, persistence, and task completion. Also, when managers need to select staff for dismissal during adverse economic conditions, it is likely that the most self-controlled staff who invest heavily in their work life will be retained. In summary, we hypothesized that children with low self-control will be much more likely than others to experience unemployment throughout their adult life, particularly when macroeconomic conditions are unfavorable. To test this idea, we capitalized on two British studies that have collected comprehensive measures of childhood characteristics and labor-force participation during adulthood.

Acknowledgements We are grateful to The Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, for their management of these data and to the UK Data Archive for making them available. However, these organizations bear no responsibility for the analysis or interpretation of the data.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article. Funding

We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L010437/1, ESRC Future Leaders grant to M. Daly), from Skills Development Scotland (Ph.D. scholarship funding to M. Egan), and from the European Commission Marie Curie Initiative (Grant Agreement PCIG10-GA-2011-303833 awarded to L. Delaney). Supplemental Material

Additional supporting information can be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data Open Practices

All data and materials have been made publicly available via the UK Data Service. The data and materials for the British Cohort Study can be accessed at http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/series/?sn=200001; the data and materials for the National Child Development Study can be accessed at http://discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/series/?sn=2000032. The complete Open Practices Disclosure for this article can be found at http://pss.sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data. This article has received badges for Open Data and Open Materials. More information about the Open Practices badges can be found at https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki/view/ and http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/1/3.full.

Notes 1.

Difference-in-difference coefficients and standard errors were calculated using the lincom command in Stata.