The increasing relevance of non-cognitive skills (i.e., soft skills) for individual development
and socioeconomic growth, and the well-established importance of cognitive skills in
explaining socioeconomic success, highlights the need of exploring their main determinants
(factors) and establishing to which extent there are potential trade-offs between different
aspects of soft and hard skills. Towards this end, this study develops an overarching empirical
framework, which couples multiobjective programming optimisation models with several
econometric specifications, thus making it possible to gain further insights regarding the way
these factors should be combined to achieve an “optimally balanced” performance of
Andalusian students at nine cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our findings underline the
existence of several trade-offs between different soft and hard skills, being mainly
conditioned by socioeconomic factors (e.g., household income, reading habits) and students’
gender.