 42. Some Contributions of Economics to the Study of Personality 871
FIGURE 42.8. Distribution of noncognitive skills by education group and distribution of a summary 
measure of noncognitive ability by education group: (a) Males, (b) Females. Source: Reproduced from 
Heckman et al. (2011), which uses data from the NLSY79. Note: The distributions represent noncogni -
tive ability factors, estimated using measures of early violent crime, minor crime, marijuana use, regu -
lar smoking, drinking, early sexual intercourse, and educational attainment as in Hansen et al. (2004). 
Sample restricted to the cross-  sectional subsample for both males and females. Distributions show only 
those with no postsecondary educational attainment. The noncognitive ability factors are normalized 
to be mean zero standard deviation one.
A
B