College Majors and Cooperative Behavior: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Sweden’s Centralized College Admission System

• In Event: Sociology of Education Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 18. Paths to College Major Selection

Abstract

Does majoring in certain fields make people less prosocial? Many have speculated that disciplines such as business and economics, which conceive humans as primarily self-interested, inhibit cooperation and prosocial behavior in those who pursue them. However, self-selection has been difficult to rule out. To address this question, I focus on attempted blood donation as a measure of prosocial behavior, use Swedish population registers that cover all first-time university applicants between 1993 and 2018, and employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that leverages Sweden’s centralized college admission system. Descriptive analyses reveal substantial variation in blood donor prevalence across one-digit ISCED-2013 fields, ranging from 11% in ICTs to 28% in health and welfare. While I find evidence of self-selection, quasi-experimental estimates provide strong evidence that college major enrollment causally affects the probability of becoming a blood donor, at times, but not always, consistent with expectations about business-oriented fields. Additional analyses uncover peer effects as an important underlying mechanism, while also suggesting that curricular content and other major-specific factors play a role. Documented effects persist for up to eight years after college entry.

Author

• Ludovico Genovese, Columbia University