Rich Self-Esteem

September 5, 2007

High self-esteem really pays off, in cold hard cash. A University of Florida study finds that people with high self-esteem as teenagers and young adults draw higher salaries in middle age than those who start out less confident. UF researcher Timothy Judge says the gap gets larger for those from more privileged backgrounds.

Judge: “It’s kind of the American dream that you can be a success no matter what the circumstances are. Our findings though show that the people who benefit best from having a positive self concept, from believing in themselves, being confident, are not just the people who start out with disadvantages, it’s the people who have human capital, as we call it, to begin with.”

Results show high self-esteem as kids can help people who start off poor by about seven thousand more dollars per year. But that amount goes up four times as much for those who didn’t grow up in poverty.

Judge: “I think the real key is, if we don’t work on the structural problems that cause people to start off with an unequal playing field to begin with, then we can’t think that just a simple concept like self-esteem is going to save the day.”

So self-esteem on its own won’t level the playing field.

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