Goal-Setting Driven Intergenerational Educational Investment
Low-income female workers in developing economies face structural barriers to long-term financial planning, allocating income primarily to immediate consumption rather than forward-looking investments in children's education.
Picture this
Imagine a family navigating a thick fog without a map, taking life one day at a time. Soft skills training focused on goal-setting acts like handing them a telescope and map, prompting parents to envision their children reaching higher education and systematically placing savings into a dedicated fund every payday to reach that vision.
What the evidence says
Soft skills training increased targeted savings for children's education by 8.04 percentage points (p < 0.05; control mean = 26.5%, representing a 30 percent relative increase) and increased expectations that children will achieve education beyond college by 8.85 percentage points (p < 0.01; control mean = 11.7%).
- Who
- N = 621 female garment workers (survey sub-sample from 2,703 RCT participants) in Bengaluru, India.
- How
- Randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating survey outcomes on financial behavior and child educational aspirations using inverse probability retention weights.
What to do
Integrate personal goal-setting and prioritization exercises into workplace soft skills curricula to stimulate employee savings behaviors directed toward children's long-term educational attainment.
From the source
"This result is consistent with a major theme in the training... personal goal setting, prioritizing actions in service of these goals, and mapping workplace motivation to the pursuit of these goals... in which saving for a child's education was explored as a specific example."
Returns_to_On_the_job_Soft_Skills_Training_Adhvarya_Kala_Nyshadham.pdf