Risk and education : How the field of study affects students' risk-taking

Many researchers have tried to find which demographic variables impact the risk an individual chooses to take when making financial investments. Studies have found different results, but a few variables that seem to impact the risk level are the field of study, gender, income, wealth, and age of the investor. We focus on the variable “field of study” in this report. Our research aims to find if students in Sweden from different fields of study invest in more or less risky assets. We did the research by gathering data from a Swedish university in Jönköping. We conducted and distributed a digital survey where students with different demographical backgrounds answered questions about their financial investments. The result shows that students studying business administration and economics programs invest at higher risk than students of other programs in the research when controlling for gender, age, income, wealth, and relationship status. We discuss that the higher risk-taking from these students has to do with their level of financial literacy. Previous studies have found that households with higher financial literacy invest more in the stock market. Business administration and economics students are likely to research financial literacy during their studies, leading to this result. Other previous studies do, however, contradict this conclusion. We have found no other significant patterns when investigating other fields of study. What we have found is, instead, that gender and total wealth impact risk-taking. Male students tend to invest with higher risk than female students, and students with higher value of their total assets tend to invest with higher risk than students with assets that are worth less