Causal determinants of educational aspirations in a social network of students

Study Context

Aspirations have become the subject of study in a recent literature that posits as their core determinant the socio-economic status, or poverty, of an individual (Dalton et al., 2016; Ray, 2006; Appadurai, 2004). Building on the theoretical contributions of aspirations theory, this literature models the process by which aspirations come into being as determined by either the agent’s own personal experiences (see, Dalton et al., 2016) or their social network of similar others (Genicot and Ray, 2017; Ray, 2006; see also, Bogliacino and Ortoleva, 2015).

Study Design

The researcher plans to collect network data from a sample of 800-900 students at a large boarding school in East Java, Indonesia, to study the determinants of educational aspirations. By matching pairs of students to mentor-mentee dyads, the researcher aims to establish new network connections and to experimentally vary the students’ aspirations gaps. An orthogonal goal-setting intervention will provide an additional individual-level shock to aspirations. The researcher plans to use this framework for additional experimental work.

Results and Policy Lessons

Results forthcoming.