Doctoral dissertation: Abilities valued in employment explain some of the development in intelligence, also known as the Flynn effect
New information has been discovered about the long-term development in intelligence, or the Flynn effect. Changes in health and nutrition alone do not explain the changes in intelligence; they are also explained by changes in skills valued in the labour market at any given time, posits the doctoral dissertation of Miika Päällysaho, Senior Researcher at VATT.
Labour market returns and their changes explain some of the Flynn effect, or the long-term development in intelligence. Labour market returns refer to how abilities or skills are rewarded in the labour market, for example as higher wages.
“According to our research, changes in labour market returns can account for about one third of the improvement in test scores that measure logical reasoning and the overall decrease in test scores that measure vocabulary among Swedish men”, says Senior Researcher Miika Päällysaho from VATT.
This information is presented in the doctoral dissertation of Päällysaho, who started as a VATT Senior Researcher this autumn. His doctoral dissertation at the Stockholm University consists of four independent articles that use Swedish register data to examine questions related to economics and public and health economics.
In addition to the impact of labour market returns, Päällysaho’s doctoral dissertation examines the introduction of medical innovations across different hospitals and socio-economic groups, the impact of earnings-related unemployment security on the health care costs of benefit recipients, and the impact of parents’ unemployment on children’s education, especially on the completion of upper secondary education.
“I am especially happy with the first article in my dissertation. It covers the topic that I will continue researching at VATT. Working on that article taught me what it takes to do top-tier research and how the tools of economics can be applied in a productive way to a topic that cognitive scientists have studied for years”, says Päällysaho.
The study has also been published in one of the world’s most esteemed and oldest scientific publications in economics, The Quarterly Journal of Economics.
In the article, Santiago Hermo, Miika Päällysaho, David Seim and Jesse M. Shapiro examine the impact of labour market returns on the trends observed in the cognitive capabilities of Swedish men born between 1962 and 1975, especially in the development of fluid and crystallised intelligence. The data for the study was sourced from the Swedish Armed Forces and Statistics Sweden. In the study, fluid intelligence was measured with a logical reasoning test, and crystallised intelligence was tested by measuring the extent of vocabulary.
The results of the model estimated in the study show that changes in labour market returns account for 37% of the increase in fluid intelligence, or reasoning, and the overall decline of crystallised intelligence, or vocabulary.
This way, the study shows that some of the Flynn effect can be explained by a change in what kind of skills society considers valuable. This is also supported by a survey included in the study, according to which the appreciation of logical reasoning among parents of pre-primary children has increased and the appreciation of a large vocabulary has decreased.
Miika Päällysaho’s doctoral dissertation in economics will be examined at Stockholm University on 11 October 2024. Professor of Economics Jarkko Harju (Tampere University) will act as opponent.
Doctoral dissertation: Miika Päällysaho, Essays in Labor, Public, and Health Economics. Stockholm University 2024.
