Project Information

Success, Failure, and Aspirations of Children Living in Poverty (SOOCCESS)

Funded by: European Commission (Research Executive Agency)

Type of action: MSCA-IF-GF (Global Fellowships)

Call: H2020-MSCA-IF-2018

Grant Agreement Number: 841754 – SOOCCESS

Beneficiary: Durham University (UK)

Partner Organisation: Monash University (Australia)

Project budget: 277,940 EUR

Researcher: Tomas Zelinsky

Supervisors: Stephen Gorard (Durham); Lata Gangadharan (Monash)

Project abstract:  From early childhood, many poor children brought up in segregated communities observe socio-economic failures such as poor living conditions, liquidity constraints, extremely high unemployment and low education levels attained by adults. Enhancing their aspirations is believed to be a tool capable of breaking one of the poverty feedback loops: poverty has been identified as a cause of the failure to aspire to one’s own potential, and at the same time, low aspirations are among the potential causes of persistent poverty. Consequently, adolescents from areas of high deprivation are generally believed to have low aspirations, though, in fact, their aspirations vary considerably, and may be generally high. This signals two main aspiration biases: aspirations failure and aspirational gap. This project is aimed to investigate how stimulating success/failure environments can reduce aspiration biases of the segregated poor, which, according to theory, should increase their chances to escape the poverty trap. The project has an interdisciplinary character: it is aimed to investigate the psychological construct of aspirations in the economic context in educational environments. Using cutting-edge methods from behavioural and experimental economics, we will experimentally investigate to what extent exposure to success/failure environments will lead to a significant decrease/increase in aspirational biases. From the methodological perspective, we will first design a novel approach to the experimental elicitation of aspirations, then we will design an experiment manipulating success/failure to assess their effects on aspirations. From the empirical viewpoint, using experimental data, the project will shed new light on the relationship between socio-economic background and aspirational biases, and thus test the predictions of economic theory. To address the concern of external validity, the proposed experiments will be conducted in different cultural settings.

Project outputs (presented at conferences and workshops):

• Subjective Well-being, Aspirations, and Physical Activity (Monash University Malaysia, Business School Research Seminar, March 2022)

• The Effects of Success and Failure on Aspirations (2022 North-American Economic Science Association Conference; University of California, Santa Barbara (CA), USA; November 2022)

• The Effects of Positive Feedback on Children’s Aspirations and Expectations (Durham University, School of Education Research Seminar; June 2023)

• On the Elicitation of Normative Income Aspirations (2023 Economic Science Association World Meeting; GATE-Lab, Lyon, France; June 2023)

• Aspirational Gap and Subjective Well-Being (21st Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies; Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; August 2023)

• Beyond Goals and Desires: Understanding Aspirations through Experimental Studies (Slovak Economic Association Meeting 2023; University of Matej Bel, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia; September 2023)

• Exploring Aspirations: Experimental Perspectives and Insights (Workshop on Experimental Methods; University of Economics, Bratislava; September 2023)

• The Effects of Disclosure of Prior Results on the Aspirations and Expectations of Student Athletes in Upcoming Racing Events (2023 North-American Economic Science Association Conference; University of North Carolina, Charlotte (NC), USA; November 2023)