Not Destined for Poverty: The Role of Educational Aspirations and Expectations in the Discontinuity of Low-Income Status Between Generations

Background and Purpose. Previous studies have consistently documented that poverty status in one generation is associated with greater economic adversity in the next generation (Duncan et al., 1998; Rodgers, 1995; Harper et al., 2003; Corcoran & Adams, 1997). However, the intergenerational cycle of poverty is not certain: many children raised in poor families mange to escape from economic adversity in adulthood (Rodgers, 1995; Corcoran , 2001). The present study investigates one potential mechanism mediating intergenerational processes of poverty: children's educational aspirations and expectations (Kao & Thompson, 2003; Sewell & Hauser, 1972). Specifically, childhood poverty status was hypothesized to predict potential differences in longitudinal trajectories of adolescent educational aspirations and expectations, which were in turn hypothesized to be related to on-time high school graduation and, eventually, to adult economic status. Methods. Data are drawn from the Seattle Social Developmental Project (SSDP), a longitudinal panel study (from ages 10 through 30) on a community sample of 808 students from a mix of higher and lower risk neighborhoods. Over half of the sample was from economically disadvantaged families. The sample is gender balanced and ethnically diverse. Educational aspirations and expectations were assessed separately from 5th to 12th grade, and then eventually combined into a single derived variable for the present study. A series of Growth Mixture Models were estimated using Mplus 5.0 to identify groups of youths following different trajectories of educational aspirations and expectations during adolescence. Results. Analyses indicated that the 4 class model of educational expectations/aspirations fit the data best: a “stable high” group (66.8%), a “stable low” group (8.8%), an “increaser” group (8.8%), and a “decreaser” group (15.6%). As hypothesized, low-income children were less likely to belong to the stable high educational expectations group than were their non-poor counterparts. Analyses also examined long-term outcomes of these adolescent aspirations/expectations trajectories. The stable high aspirations group was most likely to graduate high school on-time, followed by the increaser group, the decreaser group, and the stable low group, respectively. This order held true for the children raised in poverty. As also expected, on-time high school graduation subsequently predicted the level of total household income at age 30. The subgroup analysis of youths from low-income families showed that on-time high school graduation was positively associated with the level of total household income at age 20. Gender and ethnicity were also included as control variables in the model. Conclusions and Implications. Findings suggest that preventive interventions seeking to support educational aspirations and expectations for low-income children may serve to interrupt the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Social work scholars and practitioners should be at the center of efforts to develop and promote empirically-supported prevention programs, as well as studies on the etiology of intergenerational discontinuity of poverty. Particularly, future research seems warranted to understand social contexts including families and schools that influence the difference in longitudinal patterns of educational aspirations and expectations.