Origins of adulthood personality: The role of adverse childhood experiences.

Abstract

We test whether adverse childhood experiences - exposure to parental maltreatment and its indirect effect on health - are associated with age 30 personality traits. We use rich longitudinal data from a large, representative cohort of young US Americans and exploit differences across siblings to control for the confounding influences of shared environmental and genetic factors. We find that maltreatment experiences are significantly and robustly associated with neuroticism, conscientiousness, and openness to experience, but not with agreeableness and extraversion. High levels of neuroticism are linked to sexual abuse and neglect; low levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience are linked to parental neglect. The associations are partially explained by the indirect effects of maltreatment on adolescence physical and mental health. Maltreatment experiences, in combination with their health effects, explain a substantial fraction of the relationship between adulthood conscientiousness and earnings or human capital. Our findings provide a possible explanation for why personality traits are important predictors of adulthood labor market outcomes.