Identity and career choice are indeed related

Maria Knoth Humlum is the author of a very interesting study "An economic analysis of identity and career choice" published at the beginning of this year in Economic Inquiry. She is an assistant professor at the Department of Economics and Business at the Aarhus University in Denmark. She accepted to answer a few questions concerning identity and career choice for the "Blind game project".

1. What is the relation between identity and  career choice? Is this gender related?

We find that identity and career choice are indeed related. In our study we identify two factors that measure aspects of individuals’ identity and show that these factors affect the career choices of the youth. Specifically, we show that individuals who are more socially oriented are more likely to choose a career in humanities, natural, or health sciences, while individuals who are more career oriented are more likely to choose a career in business, law, and social science. The pattern is similar for men and women, but career oriented women are more likely to choose a career in engineering and natural science.

2. Sometimes people make mistakes when chosing their career. Nevertheless, are their choices relevant to some part of their identity? 

Dropout rates in higher education tend to relatively high suggesting that indeed many young individuals make at least an initial mistake in their choice of career. However, this does not necessarily imply that the choice of career was not in line with their identity. We can think of individuals as belonging to a set of social categories, and when they make a career choice, it may be more aligned with some part of their identity or some of the social categories than with others. 

3. Is it possible to change some part of our identity to fit our jobs? What would be the motivation for it? can financial pay off make us want to be different individuals?

I don’t think there is a definitive answer to this question. 

4. People with different careers during their lives - eg. doctors that become politicians, lawyer that become administrators, architectures that become bussiness man etc - do they have a multiple faced identity or they just found across their road a more adequate job for their real identity?

As suggested above, identity is likely to be multidimensional, and therefore the fact that some individuals pursue e.g. two very different careers in the course of their lives is not in itself evidence that the initial choice did not fit their identity.