Do sporty people have access to higher job quality?

Abstract

It is known that non-cognitive skills are an important determinant of success in life. However, their returns are not simple to measure and, as a result, only relatively few studies have dealt with this empirical question on the labour market. We consider sports practice as a way to improve or signal non-cognitive skills endowment. Therefore, the analysis of its impact on the labour market integration allows us to evaluate the returns of some specific non-cognitive skills. We test the hypothesis that sporty people -ceteris paribus- have access to higher quality of job thanks to the non-cognitive skills they have or they are supposed to have. Using objective measures of job quality, we demonstrate that being sporty does matter and that its effect cannot be award to any other extracurricular activities.