Childhood Sporting Activities and Adult Labour-Market Outcomes.

Abstract

We here ask whether childhood sport participation is positively correlated with adult labour-market outcomes. There are many potential channels for this effect, although, as usual, identifying a causal relationship is difficult. We appeal to two widely-separated waves of Add Health data to map out the correlation between childhood sports and a number of adult labour-market outcomes. We show that different types of childhood sports are associated with both managerial responsibilities and autonomy at work when adult. We take the endogeneity of sport seriously, and appeal to a variety of techniques, including the use of data on siblings, in order to obtain estimates that are as close to unbiased as possible. Last, we compare the effect of sporting activities to that of other leisure activities.