The Future in Mind: Aspirations and Long-Term Outcomes in Rural Ethiopia

This paper tests whether a light-touch behavioral intervention targeting aspirations can produce persistent economic effects on a poor rural population. The research question is whether changing how poor people perceive their future opportunities — by raising aspirations — alters their investment decisions in ways that persist over a multi-year horizon. The authors conduct a randomized controlled trial in Doba, a remote mountainous district in rural Ethiopia roughly 380 kilometers from Addis Ababa, selected partly because its extreme isolation meant residents had almost no exposure to television or media, making even a single video screening a memorable event.

The sample consists of 1,152 households (2,112 individuals) across 64 villages. Households were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a treatment group shown four 15-minute documentaries featuring real rural individuals from similar communities who escaped poverty through goal-setting and hard work; a placebo group shown an Ethiopian entertainment comedy with no aspirational content; and a within-village control group who were only surveyed. Both the household head and spouse in treatment and placebo groups were invited to attend. Compliance was very high, with only 2 percent of individuals not complying with their assigned condition. Data were collected at baseline (2010), six months after screening (2011), and five years after baseline (2015–2016). Attrition was notably low: 96 percent of households were re-interviewed at the five-year endline, and 94 percent of individual respondents.

Five years after the screening, treated households show meaningfully larger investment across three domains relative to the control group, with all headline results significant at 5 percent or less and robust to multiple hypothesis testing. First, on agricultural effort and investment: treated household heads and spouses work approximately one extra hour per day on their own farms (roughly 8.6 percent of the control mean per spouse). Treated households are 10 percentage points more likely to have adopted modern crop inputs (improved seeds, inorganic fertilizer) and 10 percentage points more likely to have invested in modern livestock inputs (feed, veterinary supplies). Holdings of productive tools are 20 percent higher than in the control group. Second, on educational investment: treated households spend approximately 36 percent more on children’s schooling than the control group. Among children who were of school-going age at the time of the intervention (aged 11–15 then, 16–20 at endline), the number completing full primary school is nearly double the control rate (0.16 per household versus 0.07 in the control). Third, on living standards: treated households experienced 0.33 to 0.38 fewer months of food insecurity in the previous year. Their holdings of consumer durables (furniture, kitchenware, phones) are 29 percent higher than the control group in value. Estimated house values are 27 percent higher. However, there is no statistically significant effect on measured food or frequent non-food consumption expenditure, a finding the authors interpret as consistent with households continuing to divert resources toward future-oriented investments rather than current consumption.

The intervention’s effects appear to operate primarily through aspirations — defined in this paper as desired goals for the future that motivate investment and effort. Treated households report significantly higher aspirations and expectations for income, assets, and children’s education five years later. By contrast, the paper finds no persistent changes in time preferences, risk preferences, grit, or beliefs about returns to technology. Locus of control shifted six months after the intervention but did not persist to the five-year endline, and the authors argue that if locus of control were the operative mechanism, investment effects would also have dissipated. The placebo group shows no significant effects relative to the control, ruling out screening exposure or social attention as mechanisms.

The paper is explicit about scope conditions. The study area was deliberately chosen for its extreme remoteness and media isolation, and the authors caution that this may have amplified the intervention’s salience and persistence relative to less isolated populations. External validity beyond comparable settings is uncertain. A back-of-the-envelope cost-effectiveness calculation finds that increases in durable asset holdings alone outweigh intervention costs by a factor of approximately two at reasonable scale.

Q: What was the intervention and what made it distinct from other role model studies? A: Treated households were invited to watch four 15-minute documentary films featuring real rural individuals from similar socioeconomic backgrounds who had escaped poverty through goal-setting, perseverance, and hard work. The films were produced in Oromiffa, the local language, and featured two male and two female role models depicting achievable actions such as installing irrigation or starting a small business. Unlike studies that vary exposure to in-person mentors or peers, participants received no ongoing mentorship, financial resources, or support of any kind beyond the single video screening, isolating the aspirations channel from material or informational transfers.

Q: How were aspirations measured and validated? A: Aspirations were measured using locally validated survey instruments (Bernard and Taffesse, 2014) that asked respondents what level of annual income, asset wealth, and oldest child’s education they would like to achieve in their lifetime. Test-retest reliability over two weeks produced within-respondent correlations of 0.77 to 0.98 across domains, which the authors benchmark against Angrist and Krueger (1999) standards for reliable income and education measures. The measures correlated in expected directions with wealth: mean income aspirations in the upper wealth tercile were 1.5 times those in the lower tercile, and asset aspirations in the upper tercile were 1.9 times those in the lower tercile.

Q: What were the five-year effects on agricultural effort and investment? A: Treated household heads and spouses worked approximately half an hour more per day each on their own farms relative to control, implying roughly one extra hour per day across the typical household’s adult members — an 8.6 percent increase over the control mean. Treated households were 10 percentage points more likely to have adopted modern crop inputs and 10 percentage points more likely to have invested in modern livestock inputs. Holdings of productive tools were 20 percent higher in value than in the control group. The overall agricultural investment index increased by 0.21 standard deviations relative to the control and 0.18 standard deviations relative to the placebo.

Q: What were the five-year effects on children’s education? A: Among children aged 16 to 20 at endline (who were 11 to 15, upper primary school age, at the time of the intervention), the number per household completing full primary school nearly doubled: 0.16 in the treatment group versus 0.07 in the control. These children in treated households also spent on average 33 minutes more per day attending school than the control group. Across all children, schooling expenditures in the treatment group were 36 percent higher than in the control and 30 percent higher than in the placebo. The education index increased by 0.25 standard deviations relative to the placebo and 0.21 standard deviations relative to the control.

Q: Why did consumption expenditure not increase despite improvements in assets and food security? A: The authors argue that the consumption result is theoretically ambiguous: if treated households continue to divert resources toward future-oriented investments (savings, productive assets, durable goods, housing), intertemporal substitution effects could offset income effects within the five-year observation window. The measured consumption variables — food and frequent non-food spending — do not capture the service flow value of accumulated durables or housing improvements, both of which increased substantially. The authors interpret this as evidence that households were still in an investment phase rather than having converted accumulated wealth into current consumption by endline.

Q: What evidence supports aspirations as the operative mechanism rather than alternative channels? A: The treatment group had significantly higher aspirations and expectations for income, assets, and children’s education at the five-year endline, while the placebo group did not. Measured time preferences, risk preferences, grit, and beliefs about returns to technology were all statistically unchanged for treated households. Locus of control shifted six months post-intervention but did not persist to five years, and the authors note that if locus of control were the driver, investment effects would also have dissipated alongside it. The null placebo effect rules out screening exposure, social attention, or information salience from outside facilitators as mechanisms.

Q: How were locus of control and fatalistic beliefs assessed in this population? A: The sample scored twice as high as Western samples on the classic Levenson (1981) fatalism scale. On the Feagin (1975) scale of perceived causes of poverty, the sample was more likely to attribute poverty to structural or fatalistic explanations than Western samples, and both measures of fatalistic beliefs were higher among poorer households within the sample. The study region’s worldview — rooted in traditional Waaqeffannaa religion, local variants of Orthodox Christianity (Fekade Egziabher), and Islam (Qadar) — emphasizes deference to authority, predestination, and resistance to change, providing qualitative grounding for the aspirations deficit being targeted.

Q: What were the effects on food insecurity and subjective wellbeing? A: Treated households reported 0.33 fewer months of food insecurity in the previous year relative to the control group (from a base of 2.71 months in the control), and 0.38 fewer months relative to the placebo. Treated participants scored approximately a quarter of a step higher on the Cantril ladder of self-reported wellbeing than the control group. There was no significant difference on the USDA food insecurity questionnaire, which the authors attribute to that scale’s unsuitability for households that consume largely from own production.

Q: What were the effects on durable goods and housing? A: Treated households reported 29 percent higher value of consumer durables (furniture, kitchenware, phones) than the control group and 32 percent higher than the placebo. Estimated house replacement values were 27 percent higher than the control and 21 percent higher than the placebo. Enumerators directly observed that treated households were more likely to have their own toilet facility, though this result was not significant relative to the placebo. There were no effects on the probability of having a non-organic roof, which the authors note is an especially expensive upgrade.

Q: How does the paper rule out spillover effects from treated to control households? A: The authors collected data on a supplementary sample of non-treated villages to serve as a “pure control” and used this to run a suggestive test for spillovers from treated households to untreated households within the same village. They found little evidence of large spillover effects, although they acknowledge limitations in the power of these tests. The physical design of the screenings — held in rooms with shuttered windows, requiring tickets for entry, conducted separately from placebo screenings — also minimized contamination during the intervention itself.

Q: What were the early (six-month) results and what do they suggest about the timing of effects? A: At six months, the shorter follow-up found increases in savings and investment in education, consistent with behavioral change beginning soon after treatment. Aspirations showed positive but noisier effects at immediate post-screening and six-month follow-ups, which the authors interpret as consistent with aspirations increasing gradually as people experiment with alternative futures (Appadurai, 2004) or as demotivating beliefs shift incrementally (Carvalho et al., 2023), rather than changing abruptly. This gradual pattern is consistent with a learn-by-doing dynamic where small initial investments generate returns that further raise aspirations.

Q: How does this study’s attrition and follow-up compare to the literature? A: The five-year attrition rate was very low: 96 percent of baseline households were re-interviewed and 94 percent of individual respondents. The authors cite Bouguen et al. (2019) as a benchmark, noting this is a high tracking rate relative to recent long-run RCT follow-ups in low- and middle-income countries. The low attrition strengthens confidence that endline estimates are not contaminated by selective dropout.

Q: What is the cost-effectiveness of the intervention? A: A back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates that increases in durable asset holdings alone outweigh the costs of the intervention by a factor of approximately two at reasonable implementation scale. The authors present this as a proof-of-concept estimate, not a full social cost-benefit analysis, and caution that cost-effectiveness may differ in settings with higher baseline media exposure or less extreme isolation.

Q: What are the key scope conditions limiting external validity? A: The study district (Doba) was chosen specifically for its extreme remoteness: at baseline, only 11 percent of respondents watched TV at least weekly and no household owned a television. The authors argue this isolation likely made the screening event especially salient and memorable, potentially amplifying effects relative to what would be expected in less isolated contexts. They are explicit that the findings represent a proof of concept for the aspirations mechanism and that effect magnitudes should not be assumed to replicate in settings with higher baseline media exposure or different cultural belief systems.

Aspirations: Defined in this paper as desired goals for the future that motivate investment and effort in order to attain them (following Bandura, 1977; Locke and Latham, 1990). Measured via validated survey instruments asking respondents the level of income, assets, or children’s education they would like to achieve in their lifetime — distinct from expectations (what one expects to achieve) and from the village maximum (what one believes the most successful person in the village could achieve).

Aspirations gap: The difference between an individual’s aspired level of income, assets, or education and their current reported level. Median aspirations gaps in the sample are 55 percent of median wealth aspirations and 58 percent of median income aspirations, indicating that aspirations exceed current levels by meaningful but not unrealistic margins.

Capacity to aspire: Drawn from Appadurai (2004), defined as a navigational capacity — the ability to read and navigate a map of a journey into the future. In contexts of poverty, this capacity is described as more brittle because poorer individuals have narrower social networks, fewer role models, and less material slack for experimentation with alternative futures.

Role model: A real individual from a similar socioeconomic background whose documented experience of escaping poverty through goal-setting and effort provides vicarious experience that allows audience members to imagine what is possible for people like them. Role models are most effective when their success appears attainable and when the steps to achieve it are visible.

Zero-sum beliefs: The belief that gains for one individual come at the expense of others in the community, documented in the study area as part of a broader fatalistic, deterministic belief system. These beliefs can suppress effort and future-oriented investment by making individual advancement appear normatively transgressive or materially impossible.

Source text origin: A classification in the paper’s pipeline framework distinguishing whether a summary is based on a full working paper PDF or HTML text versus abstract-only text. Abstract-only summaries are blocked as they miss scope conditions, quantitative results, and the full argument structure.

Placebo group: Households randomly invited to watch an Ethiopian comedy entertainment program (with no aspirational content) rather than the role model documentaries. Used to separate the effect of the aspirations content from the effects of the screening event itself, exposure to outside facilitators, or social attention accompanying selection for the intervention.