Browsing by Person "Schlenker, Eva Gabriele"

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Essays on occupational choice
(2013) Schlenker, Eva Gabriele; Wagenhals, Gerhard
Occupational choices have far-reaching consequences for young adults. Occupations do not only influence career opportunities and earnings. They also have an impact on status and reputation in society. The importance of occupational choice is reinforced because occupational choice is hardly reversible and, therefore, creates path dependencies in one's life. This issue is especially crucial if job mobility is low, as it is the case in Germany. Changes in occupations are less common in Germany in comparison to labour markets that are characterised by lower levels of employment protection such as Great Britain. Additionally, the importance of educational credentials is high in Germany compared to other countries. Therefore, occupational choices are hardly revisable and, if at all, at high monetary and non-monetary costs such as student fees and a loss of leisure time while participating in adult education. However, in times of aging societies and shrinking labour forces, occupational choices are not only a matter of an individual's well-being. The match of individuals and their occupations is also of crucial importance for the efficiency of labour markets because a worker's productivity is increased if the job requirements match the worker's skills. This thesis addresses the question of how occupational choices are affected by exogenous circumstances and social environments. When analysing occupational choices, it is crucial to recognise that occupational choices are highly ramified and cannot be modelled by a single self-contained decision process. Occupational choices must be understood as the result of decisions during childhood and adolescence because these decisions condition individual opportunities afterwards. Thus, education choices during childhood affect occupational choices to a large extent because the access to occupations depends on educational credentials. This thesis considers the described multi-layered structure of occupational choice by analysing different decisions made during childhood and adolescence and their implication on occupational outcomes. On the one hand, the thesis examines whether parents influence their children's education and occupational choices. One hypothesis is that parental influence can decrease the efficiency of these choices because choices do not simply present the child's abilities and interests but also parental interests. On the other hand, the consequences of occupational choices on labour market outcomes are analysed in terms of labour supply in this thesis. The effect of institutional settings on the labour market behaviour of different occupation groups is tested conditionally with respect to selection effects. The author shows different patterns of behaviour in terms of labour supply using the example of women in STEM. A review of the existing literature shows that shortcomings exist in the economic understanding of occupational choice. This thesis contributes to the improvement of this understanding and fills some of the existing knowledge gaps. The author's empirical findings show that parents substantially influence their children's education and occupational choices. It is not certain that parental influence improves the efficiency of these choices, however. Further research has to answer this question by measuring costs and benefits. Additionally, further research is needed to improve the understanding of differences in labour supply between occupational groups. This thesis shows that significant differences in the labour supply of women in STEM exist compared to women in other occupations. Future studies are required to answer the research question of how other occupational groups, such as sales or education, react to different institutional settings. These scientific results are crucial to develop policies that meet the needs of the occupational groups in focus and that take into account group-specific employment patterns.