Ascribed Status, Fortune, or Personal Effort? Children's Attributions of Achievement and Educational Aspirations in China: A Moderating Role of Regional Household Poverty Status

Background and Purpose

Children’s educational aspirations are a crucial indirect predictor of future upward mobility. Previous research found that locus of control, reflecting internal or external attribution of success or failure, is significantly associated with children’s educational motivations, with those attributing internally more likely to invest in education.

However, three key gaps remain: 1) research often prioritizes academic attainment over educational aspirations, a crucial predictor of future actions, especially for younger children who have not completed education yet; 2) the measure of locus of control fails to capture nuanced perceptions of success, whereas achievement attributions offer deeper insights into individual and structural factors; 3) in collectivist societies, self-concepts are less emphasized, potentially altering the role of locus of control in East Asian versus Western contexts.

Therefore, this study aims to explore how children’s attributions of achievement explain their educational aspirations in a Chinese collectivist cultural context. Given the disparity in children’s educational aspirations between urban and rural areas in China, this study further examines the moderating effects of regional household poverty status.

Methods

This study uses the 2020 wave of nationally representative child-reported data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) (N = 1,812). The outcome—children’s educational aspirations—is measured by the minimum years of education children hope to complete. The primary predictor—children’s attributions of achievement—serves as a proxy for children’s locus of control, measured by a scale on perceptions of success factors, with a higher score indicating a strong belief in personal effort, reflecting an internal locus of control. Covariates include a moderator—regional household poverty status (rural poor, rural non-poor, urban poor, and urban non-poor) and other controls such as parenting practice, children’s factors, and sociodemographic characteristics.

Multivariate regression analysis was used with ordinary least squares (OLS) to examine how children’s attributions of achievement and regional household poverty vulnerability are associated with their educational aspirations. Standardized beta coefficients for the outputs were used to compare the coefficients across variables.

Results

Results indicate that children who attribute achievement to personal effort rather than uncontrollable external factors demonstrate significantly higher educational aspirations (β = 0.05, p = .031). In addition, children from urban poor households are more likely to have lower educational aspirations (β = –0.04, p = .047) compared to those from non-poor urban households. The interaction effect between children’s attributions of achievement and regional household vulnerability reveals that a stronger belief in personal effort shaping success is associated with higher educational aspirations among children from rural poor families (β = 0.20, p = .045).

Conclusions and Implications

This study emphasizes that future policies and programs should prioritize fostering educational aspiration-building, especially among urban poor households, and strengthening children’s internal locus of control in rural impoverished settings. These efforts can help cultivate higher educational aspirations, ultimately leading to more promising future achievement.