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Childhood Aspirations and Adult Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Margaret Leighton

    (University of St Andrews)

  • Irina Merkurieva

    (University of St Andrews)

Abstract

This paper extracts aspirations from texts written in childhood by members of a British longitudinal cohort and explores how these relate to later life outcomes. Applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools to short essays collected at age 11, we identify four aspiration themes: family, hobbies, financial success, and career. The weight of these four themes varies substantially across respondents, with girls on average placing more weight on family, and boys on financial success. Aspirations extracted using our method are strongly predictive of later life outcomes, even when controlling for detailed measures of early life environment, ability, and family background. These associations are often highly heterogeneous by gender; for example, family-related aspirations are associated with higher educational attainment for men, but lower educational attainment for women.

Suggested Citation

  • Margaret Leighton & Irina Merkurieva, 2025. "Childhood Aspirations and Adult Outcomes," Economics Discussion Papers 2505, Department of Economics, The University of St Andrews Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:san:econdp:2505
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    File URL: https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~wwwecon/repecfiles/econdp/2505.pdf
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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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