Secular rise in economically valuable personality traits.

Although trends in many physical characteristics and cognitive capabilities of modern humans are well-documented, less is known about how personality traits have evolved over time. We analyze data from a standardized personality test administered to 79% of Finnish men born between 1962 and 1976 (n = 419,523) and find steady increases in personality traits that predict higher income in later life. The magnitudes of these trends are similar to the simultaneous increase in cognitive abilities, at 0.2-0.6 SD during the 15-y window. When anchored to earnings, the change in personality traits amounts to a 12% increase. Both personality and cognitive ability have consistent associations with family background, but the trends are similar across groups defined by parental income, parental education, number of siblings, and rural/urban status. Nevertheless, much of the trends in test scores can be attributed to changes in the family background composition, namely 33% for personality and 64% for cognitive ability. These composition effects are mostly due to improvements in parents' education. We conclude that there is a "Flynn effect" for personality that mirrors the original Flynn effect for cognitive ability in magnitude and practical significance but is less driven by compositional changes in family background.

The Impact of Forced Migration on Mortality: A Cohort Study of 242,075 Finns from 1939-2010.

BACKGROUND: The stresses and life changes associated with migration may have harmful long-term health effects, especially for mental health. These effects are exceedingly difficult to establish, because migrants are typically a highly selected group. METHODS: We examined the impact of migration on health using "naturally occurring" historical events. In this article, we use the forced migration of 11% of the Finnish population after WWII as such a natural experiment. We observed the date and cause of death starting from 1 January 1971 and ending in 31 December 2010 for the cohort of 242,075 people. Data were obtained by linking individual-level data from the 1950 and 1970 population censuses and the register of death certificates from 1971 to 2010 (10% random sample). All-cause and cause-specific mortalities were modeled using Poisson regression. RESULTS: Models with full adjustment for background variables showed that both all-cause mortality (RR 1.03, 95% CI 1.01, 1.05), and ischemic heart disease mortality (RR 1.11, 95% CI 1.08, 1.15) were higher in the displaced population than in the nondisplaced population. Suicide mortality was lower (RR 0.77, 95% CI 0.64, 0.92) in displaced than in the general population. CONCLUSIONS: In our long-term follow-up study, forced migration was associated with increased risk of death due to ischemic heart diseases. In contrast, lower suicide mortality was observed in association with forced migration 25 years or more.