Gendered university major choice: the role of intergenerational transmission

Julia Philipp

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: In this paper, I study the role of gender-typical parental occupation for young adults’ gender-typical university major choice using data on a recent cohort of university students in Germany. Results show significant intergenerational associations between the gender typicality in parental occupation and young adults’ majors. As to why these effects occur, findings suggest that the transfer of occupation-specific resources from parents to their children plays an important role and that a transmission of gender roles explains at least some of the father-son associations. The paper contributes to existing literature by introducing a novel measure that operationalises the extent to which majors and occupations are ‘typically female’ or ‘typically male’ and by studying different transmission channels.

Keywords: gender norms; gender roles; university major choice; intergenerational transmission; Intergenerational transmission; Gender roles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 J16 J24 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2023-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen
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Published in Journal of Population Economics, 1, April, 2023, 36(2), pp. 1049 - 1097. ISSN: 1432-1475

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:115195

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