Inheritance of fields of study

This project is about how university fields of study are inherited across generations. In Sweden, children are three times as likely to graduate from the field that their parent studied. But this correlation is influenced by many factors: some diplomas are more common in certain social groups, and families can have multi-generational traditions of studying medicine, for example. This project uses a statistical method called regression discontinuity design to study the causal effect of parental education choice. By comparing parents who are either just above or just below an admissions cutoff and then evaluate what their child will study, it is possible to measure the direct effect of the parent's choice.