IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bss/wpaper/33.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Educational aspirations and decision-making in a context of poverty. A test of rational choice models in El Salvador

Author

Listed:
  • Martina Jakob
  • Benita Combet

Abstract

Previous research on educational aspirations and educational decision-making has mostly focused on high-income countries and thus on a relatively homogeneous socio-economic context. However, educational decision-making may be sensitive to contextual factors such as economic deprivation, a dysfunctional welfare state or poor access to credit markets - characteristics shared by most low- and middle-income countries. To better understand how economically disadvantaged individuals in developing countries make their educational choices, we conducted a survey based on a random sample with high school students in the rural department Morazán in El Salvador, a lower middle-income country in Latin America. Our results show that regardless of the social background, almost all students aspire to pursue tertiary education, probably due to the high tertiary degree premium in earnings and the high social benefits. However, the lack of possibilities to finance their studies generally prevents the realisation of these aspirations for lower social background students. While in high-income countries, cost factors are not very important in the decision-making process, the burden of costs explains around 45 percent of the social background effect in El Salvador. Other factors such as academic confidence, expected future economic benefits, parental status maintenance wish, individual risk aversion and time discounting preferences play only a minor role.

Suggested Citation

  • Martina Jakob & Benita Combet, 2020. "Educational aspirations and decision-making in a context of poverty. A test of rational choice models in El Salvador," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 33, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences, revised 01 Aug 2020.
  • Handle: RePEc:bss:wpaper:33
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.sowi.unibe.ch/files/wp33/JakobCombet2020_WPV2.pdf
    File Function: Revised version
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://repec.sowi.unibe.ch/files/wp33/JakobCombet2020_WorkingPaper.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Javier E. B√°ez & Adriana Camacho, 2011. "Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia," Documentos CEDE 8900, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    2. Kilburn, Kelly & Handa, Sudhanshu & Angeles, Gustavo & Mvula, Peter & Tsoka, Maxton, 2017. "Short-term impacts of an unconditional cash transfer program on child schooling: Experimental evidence from Malawi," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 63-80.
    3. Murakami, Yuki & Blom, Andreas, 2008. "Accessibility and affordability of tertiary education in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru within a global context," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4517, The World Bank.
    4. Ulrich Kohler, 2011. "Comparing coefficients between nested nonlinear probability models," German Stata Users' Group Meetings 2011 08, Stata Users Group.
    5. Ben Jann, 2017. "Customizing Stata graphs made easy," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 29, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences, revised 18 Apr 2017.
    6. Gary S. Becker, 1962. "Investment in Human Capital: A Theoretical Analysis," NBER Chapters, in: Investment in Human Beings, pages 9-49, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Ben Jann, 2007. "Making regression tables simplified," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 7(2), pages 227-244, June.
    8. Lanjouw, Peter, 2001. "Nonfarm Employment and Poverty in Rural El Salvador," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 529-547, March.
    9. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Ben Jann, 2018. "Customizing Stata graphs made even easier," University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers 30, University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences.
    11. Ben Jann, 2018. "Customizing Stata graphs made easy (part 1)," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 18(3), pages 491-502, September.
    12. Ben Jann, 2014. "A new command for plotting regression coefficients and other estimates," German Stata Users' Group Meetings 2014 09, Stata Users Group.
    13. Eskil Heinesen & Richard Davies & Anders Holm, 2002. "The relative risk aversion hypothesis of educational choice," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(4), pages 683-713.
    14. Di Mo & Linxiu Zhang & Hongmei Yi & Renfu Luo & Scott Rozelle & Carl Brinton, 2013. "School Dropouts and Conditional Cash Transfers: Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial in Rural China's Junior High Schools," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 190-207, February.
    15. Ben Jann, 2008. "The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 8(4), pages 453-479, December.
    16. Deon Filmer & Lant Pritchett, 1999. "The Effect of Household Wealth on Educational Attainment: Evidence from 35 Countries," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 25(1), pages 85-120, March.
    17. Ben Jann, 2018. "Customizing Stata graphs made easy (part 2)," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 18(4), pages 786-802, December.
    18. Paul Schultz, T., 2004. "School subsidies for the poor: evaluating the Mexican Progresa poverty program," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 199-250, June.
    19. Bashir, Sajitha & Luque, Javier, 2012. "Equity in tertiary education in Central America : an overview," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6180, The World Bank.
    20. Loyalka, Prashant & Liu, Chengfang & Song, Yingquan & Yi, Hongmei & Huang, Xiaoting & Wei, Jianguo & Zhang, Linxiu & Shi, Yaojiang & Chu, James & Rozelle, Scott, 2013. "Can information and counseling help students from poor rural areas go to high school? Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 1012-1025.
    21. Javier E. B√°ez & Adriana Camacho, 2011. "Assessing the Long-term Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Human Capital: Evidence from Colombia," Documentos CEDE 8900, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    22. Ben Jann, 2014. "Plotting regression coefficients and other estimates," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 14(4), pages 708-737, December.
    23. Oaxaca, Ronald L. & Ransom, Michael R., 1994. "On discrimination and the decomposition of wage differentials," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 5-21, March.
    24. Ulrich Kohler & Kristian Bernt Karlson & Anders Holm, 2011. "Comparing coefficients of nested nonlinear probability models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LLC, vol. 11(3), pages 420-438, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Huangwei Gao & Zhenni Cai & Jian Wu, 2022. "What Influences the Self-Educational Expectations of China’s Migrant Children in the Post-Pandemic Era," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-13, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakob, Martina & Combet, Benita, 2020. "Educational aspirations and decision-making in a context of poverty. A test of rational choice models in El Salvador," SocArXiv w9bkq, Center for Open Science.
    2. repec:osf:socarx:w9bkq_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Diriwaechter, Patric & Shvartsman, Elena, 2018. "The anticipation and adaptation effects of intra- and interpersonal wage changes on job satisfaction," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 116-140.
    4. Felipe Barrera-Osorio & Leigh L. Linden & Juan E. Saavedra, 2019. "Medium- and Long-Term Educational Consequences of Alternative Conditional Cash Transfer Designs: Experimental Evidence from Colombia," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 54-91, July.
    5. David Roodman, 2022. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Comment," Papers 2207.09036, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2025.
    6. Prabhat Kishore & Pratap S. Birthal, 2024. "The impact of direct benefit transfers for micro-irrigation on farm performance: Evidence from India," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 26(7), pages 17995-18015, July.
    7. Zhao, Yuejun, 2023. "Job displacement and the mental health of households: Burden sharing counteracts spillover," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    8. Laura C. Blanco, 2022. "Diferenciales salariales de género y sus determinantes para el personal académico en propiedad en la Universidad de Costa Rica. (Gender wage differentials and its determinants for tenured academics at," Working Papers 202204, Universidad de Costa Rica, revised May 2022.
    9. Virgi A. Sari, 2019. "Educational Assistance and Education Quality in Indonesia: The Role of Decentralization," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 45(S1), pages 123-154, December.
    10. Zhou, Lei & Jiang, Bo & Wang, Jingxi, 2020. "Do cash transfers have impacts on student Academic, cognitive, and enrollment outcomes? Evidence from rural China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    11. Daria Suprunenko, 2024. "Ukrainian export and production after the 2014 Russia shock," IEER Working Papers 124, Institute of Empirical Economic Research, Osnabrueck University.
    12. Hidayatina, Achsanah & Garces-Ozanne, Arlene, 2019. "Can cash transfers mitigate child labour? Evidence from Indonesia’s cash transfer programme for poor students in Java," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Anja Gaentzsch, 2020. "Do conditional cash transfers (CCTs) raise educational attainment? An impact evaluation of Juntos in Peru," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(6), pages 747-765, November.
    14. Assaf Rotman & Hadas Mandel, 2023. "Gender-Specific Wage Structure and the Gender Wage Gap in the U.S. Labor Market," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(2), pages 585-606, January.
    15. Hélène Giacobino & Elise Huillery & Bastien Michel & Mathilde Sage, 2022. "Schoolgirls Not Brides: Secondary Education as a Shield Against Child Marriage," Working Papers DT/2022/01, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    16. Orazio Attanasio & Lina Cardona-Sosa & Carlos Medina & Costas Meghir & Christian Posso, 2021. "Long Term Effects of Cash Transfer Programs in Colombia," Borradores de Economia 1170, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    17. Roman Hoffmann & Sebastian Uljas Lutz, 2019. "The health knowledge mechanism: evidence on the link between education and health lifestyle in the Philippines," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(1), pages 27-43, February.
    18. Virgi Sari, 2018. "Educational assistance and education quality in Indonesia: The role of decentralization," WIDER Working Paper Series 037, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    19. Robinson, Peter John & Botzen, W. J. Wouter & Kunreuther, Howard & Chaudhry, Shereen J., 2021. "Default options and insurance demand," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 39-56.
    20. Francesca Marchetta & Tom Dilly, 2019. "Supporting Education in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges for an Impact Investor," Working Papers hal-02288103, HAL.
    21. Aleksandra Matuszewska-Janica, 2018. "Men and Women Wage Differences in Spain and Poland," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 14(1), pages 45-52.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    educational aspirations; educational decision-making; rational choice; El Salvador;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bss:wpaper:33. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Ben Jann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sowi.unibe.ch/ .

    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.