Fairness Evaluations of Higher Education Graduates' Earnings: The Role of Female Preference for Equality and Self-Interest

Educational and occupational horizontal segregation contribute significantly to economic inequalities, especially in contexts with a strong correspondence between fields of study and occupational outputs, such as in Germany. However, the extent to which individuals perceive disparities in economic returns across different fields of study as fair and the factors influencing these fairness evaluations remain largely unexplored. This study aims to understand fairness evaluations by assessing two theoretical explanations and their interrelation: (1) female preference for equality, where women generally favour smaller earnings disparities, and (2) biases leading to higher reward expectations for individuals in the same field of study as the evaluator. Our empirical research draws on a novel survey experiment from the German Student Survey (2021), in which higher education students evaluated the fairness of realistic earnings for graduates from various fields of study. These earnings relate to the entry phase of an individual's career, reflecting differences in economic returns exclusively tied to fields of study, independent of occupational or life trajectories. Our findings support the female preference for equality and self-interest theoretical perspectives, revealing that women and respondents in fields associated with lower-earning jobs tend to perceive greater unfairness. We further find evidence of an interaction between the two mechanisms, with women being particularly likely to perceive greater unfairness when it aligns with their self-interest.