EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Earnings Expectations of “First-in-Family” University Students and Their Role for Major Choice

Katharina Adler, Fabian Kosse (), Markus Nagler and Johannes Rincke ()
Additional contact information
Katharina Adler: University of Würzburg
Fabian Kosse: University of Würzburg
Johannes Rincke: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

No 17720, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: How do students' earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data from a German university to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and non-FiF students. Our data can explain two-thirds of this gap, with the largest share attributable to field of study choice. We show that FiF students sort less into study fields based on their earnings expectations. Investigating potential explanations, we find that they expect lower own ability and worse non-wage amenities in high-earning fields.

Keywords: earnings expectations; higher education; first-generation; socio-economic gaps (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I24 I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2025-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17720.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Earnings Expectations of “First-in Family” University Students and Their Role for Major Choice (2025) Downloads
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:iza:izadps:dp17720

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17720