Anticipated Discrimination and Major Choice

Louis-Pierre Lepage, Xiaomeng Li and Basit Zafar

No 33680, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study whether gender differences in university major choices result from anticipated labor market discrimination. First, we document two novel facts using administrative transcript records from a large Midwestern university: women are less likely to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as well as business and economics, but 1) those who do are positively selected on ability, and 2) obtain higher grades conditional on ability. Second, we show that these facts are consistent with a signaling model in which women anticipate greater labor market discrimination in STEM, business, and economics than in other fields. Third, we provide direct empirical evidence of anticipated discrimination using a student survey. The survey reveals striking patterns of anticipated discrimination by women, particularly in STEM, business, and economics, affecting both expected economic outcomes such as wages as well as expected workplace conditions. We conclude by showing that anticipated discrimination explains women's course taking and intended major choices, but not men's.

JEL-codes: I23 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-lab
Note: ED LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33680.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:33680

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33680

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().