Little League, Big Bucks? The Effect of Youth Sports Participation on Future Wages

Previous empirical research generally concludes that youth sports participation increases wages later in life. New evidence provided in this paper casts doubt on that conclusion. Current methods for addressing selection bias in sports participation are inadequate. I develop an instrumental variable model which exploits exogenous variation in school sports culture to address selection bias. After accounting for selection bias, sports do not significantly affect wages or labor force participation, but they do improve self confidence