Assortative preferences in choice of major

Yigit Aydede

IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 25

Abstract: The primary objective of this study is to examine the contribution of available information constrained by parents’ fields of study to the observed assortative preferences in their children’s choice of major. Comparable to panel models, we define within-family transmission functions with 1-to-2 matches (1 for each parent). Using the confidential major file of the 2011 National Household Survey from Canada, the results show that children’s choice of field of study exhibits significant assortative preferences isolated from ability sorting and unobserved differences across majors and other family characteristics. With some caution, we attribute this persisting assortative tendency to the information asymmetry across alternative majors built on by parents’ educational backgrounds within families.

Keywords: field-of-study homogamy; choice of field of study; occupational relatedness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 I2 J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/izajole-2020-0006 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:izajle:v:9:y:2020:i:1:p:25:n:6

DOI: 10.2478/izajole-2020-0006

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Economics is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc and Pamela Qendrai

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Economics from Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().