IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v267y2026ics0165176526002843.html

Economic mobility beliefs and parental investment: Experimental evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan, Rebecca
  • Kalil, Ariel
  • Schneider, Marlis M.
  • Destin, Mesmin
  • Silverman, David
  • Hernandez, Ivan A.

Abstract

Economic theory predicts that parents invest more in children when expected returns are higher. We test whether beliefs about societal economic mobility affect these expectations and subsequent investment decisions. In an online experiment, 997 U.S. parents were randomly assigned to view information emphasizing either upward or downward economic mobility. Parents in the upward mobility condition reported higher perceived returns on investment and invested more time and resources: specifically, they allocated 16% more time to a child-focused task and reported 12% higher willingness to pay for educational resources. Results did not vary by parental income or education.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan, Rebecca & Kalil, Ariel & Schneider, Marlis M. & Destin, Mesmin & Silverman, David & Hernandez, Ivan A., 2026. "Economic mobility beliefs and parental investment: Experimental evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 267(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:267:y:2026:i:c:s0165176526002843
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2026.113090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176526002843
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2026.113090?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:267:y:2026:i:c:s0165176526002843. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.