Chapter 2. Early Skills and Adult Life Satisfaction 2.3 Methodology To investigate whether and to what extent early reading and math skills relate to adult life satisfaction, we use Ordinary Least Squares regressions. We consider the following model: OUTCOMEi =β0 +β1SKILLi +β2IQi +β3SEXi +ϵi (2.1) whereOUTCOMEi represents the outcome variable for individual i. In our main analysis, the outcome variable is life satisfaction, measured at different phases in life, which we treat as a continuous variable. This is commonly done in life satisfaction research and justified by Ferreri-Carbonell and Frijters (2004), who conclude that linear and ordinal models yield essentially the same results for life satisfaction. Our variable of interest is SKILLi. This variable refers to the standardized skill level of the individual at age 10. We consider reading and math skills separately. Furthermore, we control for the individual’s general intelligence (IQi) andsex (SEXi) in most specifications. ϵi is the error term. To explore income and daily functioning as mediators, we add these variables in further specifications of the model. 26
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