– Having an opposite sex sibling makes educational choices more gender-stereotypical for both genders.
– Having an opposite sex sibling reduces women’s probability to enroll in any STEM program after compulsory schooling by two percent and to complete a STEM college major by nine percent.
– Men with opposite sex siblings are more likely to enroll in and complete STEM education, but are not more likely to succeed in high-level STEM programs.
– Parents with mixed sex children gender-specialize their parenting more and spend more quality time with their same sex child than parents with same sex children.
– Young boys with an opposite sex sibling are exposed to more gender-stereotypical behavior within the family than boys with a same sex sibling.
– Having a gender-discordant sibling induces more men to enroll in a STEM program that is at a higher level of education than the highest level of education they ever complete. This implies that these men are more likely to drop out of a STEM program and never complete another field of study at the same educational level. There is no effect on drop-out for women.
2017 - Sibling Gender Composition and Preferences for STEM Education
This study uses Danish administrative data for the total population from 1980 through 2015. After restricting the data set to only first-born children born between 1960 and 1988, the author excluded first generation immigrants, cases with siblings more than 5 years apart in age, siblings that did not survive their first year of life, twins, and individuals who died before age 30 or did not live in Denmark between ages 25-30. The final sample contained 469,758 individuals (228,856 women and 240,902 men).
IV: Opposite sex sibling, Age spacing (in months), Number of full siblings, Having two or more full siblings, Mother’s age at birth, Father’s age at birth, Mother’s education (years), Father’s education (years), Mother’s field of study and/or occupation (STEM, Care, Administration, Service, or Agriculture), Father’s field of study and/or occupation (STEM, Care, Administration, Service, Agriculture, Defense), 2nd generation immigrant
DV: The main analysis of STEM education considers six binary outcomes, measuring the probability that the individual: 1) enrolls in a STEM program as the first place of enrollment after primary school; 2) ever enrolls in a STEM program; 3) ever completes a STEM degree; 4) has the highest completed degree within STEM; 5) has a highest completed education within STEM that is directly preparing for the labor market (STEM Work Prep); and 6) enrolls in a STEM program at a higher educational level than the highest level he or she ever completes (STEM Dropout). A complementary analysis considers the probability of ever enrolling in and completing a secondary vocational-, academic high school- and tertiary STEM program.
For the second part of the paper the author utilizes as DV occupational choice and earnings at three different time points.