“Do High School Sports Build or Reveal Character? Bounding Causal Estimates of Sports Participation”, 2018-06-01 (; similar):
Many studies have documented that high school athletes attain higher levels of education and earn higher wages in the labor market as adults.
An important policy question is whether sports participation builds skills or if it instead reveals existing skill levels.
We separately analyze 3 longitudinal data sets from the United States.
We use newly developed econometric methods to put bounds on the causal effects of sports.
For most outcomes, we find no evidence of a causal effect of high school sports on educational and labor market outcomes.
We examine the extent to which participation in high school athletics in the United States has beneficial effects on future education, labor market, and health outcomes.
Due to the absence of plausible instruments in observational data, we use recently developed methods that relate selection on observables with selection on unobservables to estimate bounds on the causal effect of athletics participation…The econometric method we use in our analysis is developed by 2016 and allows researchers to empirically test the extent of deviations from exogeneity in a linear model with univariate treatment. Specifically, this method puts bounds on the correlation between the policy variable and the unobservable characteristics relative to the correlation between the policy variable and observable characteristics. We implement the method as a sensitivity analysis to include the case where sports participation is correlated with the error term in the outcome equation.
We do not find consistent evidence of individual education or labor market benefits. However, we do find that male (but not female) athletes are more likely to exercise regularly as adults, but are no less likely to be obese.
[Keywords: human capital, high school sports, selection]
…Athletic participation is strongly positively correlated with a number of outcomes—including high school graduation, college attendance, college graduation, wages, exercise habits, and absence of obesity—but we find that this correlation is almost completely due to selection. For most of the outcomes that we consider, we find that even if the correlation between athletic participation and unobservable characteristics is a small fraction of the correlation between athletic participation and observable characteristics, then there is no effect of sports. Across several different outcomes and different samples, we find no consistent benefit from high school sports. However, in a few cases that we discuss below, we do find statistically-significant effects from sports participation that are arguably causal.
We analyze 3 separate nationally representative longitudinal surveys that link athletic participation in high school with future individual outcomes such as post-secondary education, labor market earnings, health, and propensity to engage in risky behaviors. The 3 surveys are the National Longitudinal Survey of 1979 (NLSY79); the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88); and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Each of these studies has been used previously by researchers to analyze effects of high school sports, but no study has jointly analyzed all 3.
…We divide the variables into 3 categories: background characteristics, school characteristics, and outcomes.
Background: Athletes tend to have higher cognitive test scores, be disproportionately white, have parents with higher levels of education, be more likely to co-reside with parents, and come from homes with higher incomes. In the NLSY79, athletes also score lower on the Rotter Locus of Control Scale, which indicates that athletes more strongly believe that their outcomes are the result of personal effort, as opposed to luck. In short, our basic summary statistics reveal that athletes are strongly positively selected on personal and family background traits.
School: On the school side, athletes are less likely to be absent from school, more likely to be found in private schools and schools with smaller student bodies, more likely to be found in rural schools, and more likely to attend schools that are more racially segregated.8 These results hold for both men and women and are in line with existing literature and theory. Namely, overwhelmingly white, private, and rural schools provide more opportunities for student athletes, for a variety of reasons. Possible explanations include differences in school funding, or that it is statistically easier to make the team at a school with a smaller student body.
Outcomes: In addition to observing that athletes have different background and school contexts, we also observe that athletes have very different adult outcomes. They attain higher levels of education, measured either by grades completed or degrees attained. Athletes also earn more as adults: about 15% higher wages for men and about 12% higher wages for women. Athletes are much more likely to report exercising regularly. Male athletes are neither more nor less likely to be obese as adults, while female athletes are much less likely to be obese. Athletes of both genders report a higher frequency of alcohol abuse as adults.
The results in Table 1 & Table 2 are striking in that the different surveys exhibit not only the same sign of sports effects, but also many of the same magnitudes, in spite of the fact that athletic participation is measured quite differently across the 3 surveys