Aspirations, Human Capital Investment, and the Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty in Indonesia

This study investigates the effect of parental aspirations gap on children’s educational attainment between 2007 and 2014, using two waves of Indonesian Family Life Survey data. The aspirations gap is measured by the difference between one’s future reference point and his or her current life evaluation reported by each household head and spouse. The results show that boys whose fathers report a moderate level of the aspirations gap achieve substantially longer schooling years than the mean level of their same age cohort. Furthermore, the relationship is found to be inversely U-shaped, implying that an excessive aspirations gap discourages investment in children’s human capital. An increasing aspirations gap of parents is also found to impede the educational attainment of children in poor families, which are more vulnerable to shocks that are found to increase the gap. Overall, the results of this paper shed light on the role of parental aspirations gap in the link between socioeconomic status of family and educational outcomes of children in Indonesia, where the gap of the poor is found to increase faster than the rich.

JOANNA ROKITA-JAŚKOW FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AT PRE-PRIMARY LEVEL. PARENTAL ASPIRATIONS AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

Recenzja

Validation of the Family Educational and Learning Capitals Questionnaire: An Australian Perspective

There is a growing recognition that parents play an important role in the academic achievement of their children. This role includes both the interactions they have with their children and the management of resources that can contribute to their children’s achievement. To better understand parents’ roles, it is important to understand their perceptions regarding the availability of these resources. This article reports the validation of the Family Educational and Learning Capitals Questionnaire (FELCQ), an instrument that measures parents’ perceptions of educational and learning resources. Based on the Actiotope Model of Giftedness, the FELCQ consists of five educational and five learning capitals plus parental aspirations for their children’s achievement. The responses of 1,917 Australian parents to the 53-item FELCQ were Rasch analyzed and the Rasch person estimates were utilized in a confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the FELCQ as a valid measure of parents’ perceptions of the capitals. The results showed that the FELCQ reflects the underlying theoretical factor structure of the Actiotope Model, including the extension of the model to include parental aspirations as an educational capital for parents in relation to their children’s education. The implications and future use of the FELCQ are discussed.