A dynamic analysis of the effects of intelligence and socioeconomic background on job-market success

Article history: Received 5 July 2010 Received in revised form 10 February 2011 Accepted 10 February 2011 Available online 21 March 2011 We compare the effects of socioeconomic background (SEB) and intelligence on wage trajectories in a dynamic growth modeling framework in a sample that had completed just 12 years of education. I show that the main difference between the two is that SEB affected wages solely by its effect on entry pay whereas intelligence affected wages primarily by its effect on mobility. I argue that a major issue that has been at the center of the debate about the roles of intelligence and SEB in social success — the difficulty in accurately measuring SEB — is to a large extent resolved by these results. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.