Jonas Radl and co-authors have published two further papers using the data collected in the EFFORT Project.
On the one hand, María Rubio-Cabañez and Jonas Radl examine the effects of air pollution on fifth-grade students’ performance on IQ tests and real-effort tasks and find indications for detrimental effects particularly of ozone on cognitive ability. Surprisingly, no systematic effects of pollutants on cognitive effort was found. The study was published in Social Science Research in May 2026.
One the other hand, Jonas Radl, Miguel Requena, and Madeline Swarr examine the relationship between family structure and children’s cognitive effort and find that living in a single-parent household is robustly associated with lower cognitive effort. The study, published in June 2026 in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, highlights a plausible mechanism underlying the educational disadvantage of children of divorce often documented in the literature.