Risk attitudes, competition and career choices : The willingness to take risk and the choice of further education among Finnish upper secondary school students

The subject of this thesis is risk attitudes and the choice of further education among Finnish secondary school students. Data comes from a survey compiled in 2011 for 18 secondary schools in Finland. The data has 3418 respondents in total, 1984 (approximately 58 percent) of whom are female. There are three main questions in this study. First, do gender, parental education and standard of living affect the secondary school student’s willingness to take risks? We measure the risk attitudes by the general risk question which asks individuals to self-asses their willingness to take risk in general on a scale from 0 to 10. Second, does the general risk question predict the behavior of secondary school students when choosing the objective degree of further education? Moreover, do respondents, who are willing to take more risk in general, apply to more selective education programs even after controlling for gender, parental education and standard of living? In addition, we will try to determine if women shy away from competition i.e. apply to less selective study programs. The main findings of this thesis are the following. There are no gender differences in risk attitudes measured by the general risk question. We do not find reliable evidence that parental education or proxy of standard of living measured by a survey item has a significant impact on individual risk attitudes. Students who are more willing to take risk according to the general risk question tend to apply to further education with lower admission rate. The admission rate for students in risk neutral and risk lover category is approximately 1.5 percentage points lower compared to the risk-averse applicants. This indicates that risk attitudes do have an effect on the choice of study track. When looking the gender balanced subsample, the effect is actually even larger. Students who are in risk lover category tend to apply to further education with 2.2 percentage points lower admission rates than risk-averse students. We find no evidence that women are shying away from competition. In fact, if we assume that there are no gender differences in ability of students, on average, women apply to significantly more prestigious study tracks when considering only the competitiveness that is, the admission rate of chosen study program. This result remains statistically significant with 1 percent level even when looking only the gender balanced fields of education.

Grantor dc:publisher

Helsingfors universitet

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Valve, Joonas

Contributors dc:contributor

• Helsingin yliopisto, Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta, Politiikan ja talouden tutkimuksen laitos
• University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political and Economic Studies
• Helsingfors universitet, Statsvetenskapliga fakulteten, Institutionen för politik och ekonomi

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

URN:NBN:fi:hulib-201703273207

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:helda.helsinki.fi:10138/155241