Abstract
Expected earnings matter for college major choices, and majors differ in both their average earnings and the age profile of their earnings. We show that students’ family background is strongly related to the earnings paths of the major they choose. Students with more educated parents, especially those who have graduate degrees, choose majors with lower early-career earnings but much stronger earnings growth. They are also less likely to choose safe majors with little early-career earnings or unemployment downside. These effects seem driven by students with more educated parents’ propensity to eventually attend graduate school and increase later earnings, but not by the propensity to attend graduate school immediately after college, meaning these students are earning less in the years after college. Parental income has a weaker relationship with major choice and may operate partially through the type of institution the student attends.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-25 |
| Journal | Education Finance and Policy |
| Volume | Early Access |
| Early online date | 9 Jun 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 9 Jun 2025 |
Keywords
- Higher Education
- College major
- return to education
- college
- family background
- parent's education
Access to Document
- Leighton_2024_EFP_Family-Background_AAM_CCBY
Copyright © 2024 the Authors. This work has been made available online in accordance with the University of St Andrews Open Access policy. This accepted manuscript is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00448.