Abstract: The Role of Child and Parent Savings in Promoting Expectations for University Education Among Middle School Students in Ghana: A Propensity Score Analysis (Society for Social Work and Research 20th Annual Conference - Grand Challenges for Social Work: Setting a Research Agenda for the Future)

Schedule:

Sunday, January 17, 2016: 11:15 AM

Meeting Room Level-Meeting Room 6 (Renaissance Washington, DC Downtown Hotel)

* noted as presenting author

Shiyou Wu, MSW, Doctoral Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

David Ansong, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Gina A. Chowa, PhD, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC

Background:

Higher expectations for the future are essential for personal advancement because of its potential to drive people to set goals and to work diligently to achieve them (Kim, 2014). For young students, having high expectations for future education may be even more important because it could motivate them to work harder toward college admission (Elliott & Beverly, 2011). This is consistent with the expectancy-value and social cognition theories, which explain that expectations affect intentions, and goals, which in turn stimulate changes in behavior (Bandura, 1977). Emerging evidence points to a direct relationship between financial savings and young people’s educational expectations in the United States (Elliot, 2009; Elliott & Beverly, 2011; Zhan & Sherraden, 2011). However, very little empirical evidence exists about the antecedent role of financial savings in shaping young people’s educational expectations in developing countries like Ghana. We build on the emerging knowledge base by examining the direct relationship of financial savings by children and their parents to children’s expectations to undertake university education.

Methods:

We used data from Ghana and compared parents and children who saved with those who did not save. We used propensity score with radius matching to address selection bias concerns, and we used greedy matching for our sensitivity test. We matched each child or parent who has savings with someone who did not have savings but had the closest propensity scores. We ran logistic regression models among the matched samples (N=3,578 youth) to examine the effects that savings have on children’s expectations to undertake university education.

Results:

Half of children with savings were male; 33% were in Grade 6; 33% were in Grade 7; and 34% were in Grade 8. The average age of children with savings was 15 (SD = 2.06) years. For their parents, the average age was 46 years (SD = 13.17), with 72% married and 16% formally employed. Results show that children who have savings of their own are 21% more likely to have expectations for a university education (p < .05) compared with children who do not have savings. Children whose parents save on their behalf are 44% more likely to have expectations for a university education (p < .05) compared with those whose parents do not have savings.

Conclusion:

The finding that parent savings are twice as predictive of children’s educational expectations as children’s own savings suggests that children are more likely to look to their parents to help fund their higher education. Moreover, the finding that youth save and that their savings produce positive expectations about education suggest it is not too early to introduce middle school-age youth to financial capability programs that would aid youth’s efforts to save while stimulating psychological benefits. This finding also has important implications for the timing of youth development policies and strategies. Youth may need policies and programs that cultivate positive outlook and financial behavior at a younger age when they are most responsive to available economic resources that can produce long-term impact.