Wages, mental abilities and assessments in large scale international surveys: Still not much more than g

We examine the role of General Mental Ability (GMA or g), versus specific abilities, in predicting wage among 69,901 participants from 19 countries in the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).... [ view full abstract ]

We examine the role of General Mental Ability (GMA or g), versus specific abilities, in predicting wage among 69,901 participants from 19 countries in the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). We define GMA as the first principal component in a battery of three ability tests, and specific abilities as the low order components. Our initial results (the wage's R² explained by GMA increases by 52% when specific abilities are added to the model) are considerably different from earlier results, which suggested that "there is not much more than g" in predicting performance. However, further analyses show that this difference disappears when crucial non-cognitive individual differences (age and sex) are controlled for (an increase of only 0.5% in R² when age and sex are controlled for). Path models of the relationships between individual differences, specific abilities, GMA and wage shed light on these results. Implications for the understanding of the relationship between mental abilities and wage, and to the understanding of cognitive test scores as representing various skills versus general ability, are discussed.