Aspiring to a Better Future: Can a Simple Psychological Intervention Reduce Poverty? 

Kate Orkin, Robert Garlick, Mahreen Mahmud, Richard Sedlmayr, Johannes Haushofer and Stefan Dercon

No 18493, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: How do aspirations influence investment decisions for people living in poverty? Does this change as peoples economic conditions improve? To answer these questions, we design a workshop teaching techniques to raise aspirations and plan to achieve them. We cross-randomise this with large unconditional cash transfers in a 415-village, 8,300-person, 1.5-year experiment in Kenya. The workshop substantially raises aspirations, investment, and living standards. But the workshop+cash produces similar effects to cash alone, potentially because cash raises aspirations. Thus, helping people living in poverty set higher aspirations can raise investment and living standards, but improving economic conditions can activate the same process.

Keywords: investment; Aspirations; Cash transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D03 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18493 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18493

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18493

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().