Drive and prudence matter as much as brain power when it comes to graduating from high school with good grades and graduating from college, according to a new study from the Center on Children and Families at Brookings Institution, which builds on a growing body of research pointing to the importance of noncognitive skills to achieving success.

Researchers Richard V. Reeves, Joanna Venator, and Kimberly Howard define drive as the ability to stick with a task even when it gets boring or difficult or a roadblock is encountered and prudence as the ability to defer gratification and look to rewards in the future.

Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the researchers measured the levels of drive and prudence in more than 5,000 children from around the United States at age 5 and again at age 10. The mother of each child answered survey questions on her child’s ability to pay attention, focus on a project and exercise impulse control, among other things, to determine each child’s level of drive and prudence at both ages. The researchers then assessed how well these responses predicted the child’s educational outcomes in adolescence and adulthood.

Seventy-four percent of the children who demonstrated drive and prudence at age 5 and/or 10 graduated from high school with a GPA greater than 2.5 and 32 percent of children with these traits graduated from college, compared to 43 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of children who had lower-than-average levels of the two character traits at those two ages.

“So: Character matters. Children who learn and can exhibit character strengths attain more years of education, earn more, and likely outperform other individuals in other areas of life,” the Brookings Institution researchers write.

While acknowledging an association between these traits and a child’s place on the socioeconomic spectrum, the researchers stressed that these character strengths can and should be developed.