This project examines the causes of cohort changes in skills, a phenomenon which is sometimes referred to as the Flynn effect. The project combines test score data from the Finnish military over two decades with population wide register data to study the causal factors driving cohort trends in both cognitive abilities and personality traits. The role of changes in secondary education, parental education, family size, and growth environment will be examined as driving factors. The project will exploit register data that link together several administrative data sources and make it possible to use historical natural experiments that allow for identification of the causal effects of these factors on the changes in skill distribution.

2023

2027