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This paper describes emerging work in development economics at the intersection of hope, poverty and material prosperity. We blend Sen’s capability approach and Snyder’s hope theory to provide a conceptual framework for integrating hope into development eco-nomics. This framework emphasizes the interplay of internal and external constraints, belief updating and differential malleability of hope between children and adults. The paper then surveys the recent literature in development economics related to Snyder’s components of hope: aspirations, pathways and agency. This survey focuses primarily on the domains of education, employment and enterprise and uses the Sen-Snyder framework to synthesize patterns in these results. It concludes with a discussion of promising research frontiers for development economists, including the need to understand how complementarities between hope components shape realized outcomes and to accommodate distinctive features of hope as it is experienced by the poor in non-Western contexts.

Cash transfers have emerged over the last two decades as one of themost widespread and highly researched poverty interventions. The use ofcash transfers to create a Basic Minimum Income (BMI) has become animportant policy debate. Extensive research has been carried out on theimpact of both conditional and unconditional cash transfers. Some of thisevidence finds that cash transfers can lead to long-term, transformativeeffects on economic well-being, while in other contexts, the effects appear tobe limited to increases in short-term consumption. This paper reviews theliterature on the impacts of cash transfers. It then presents a simple modelthat seeks to understand when we can expect cash transfers to havetransformative effects in which the income of recipients transitions to asignificantly and sustainably higher level. Behavioral extensions to themodel show how responses to cash transfers may change when we accountfor endogenous discount rates, cognitive ability, and aspirations.

• We present the results of a randomized controlled trial among dairy farmers in Bolivia, in which the treatment group participated in an aspirational hope training. • The training augments aspirations related to dairy production, as well as quality-enhancing practices. • We do not find increases in milk production, but the likelihood of milk being rejected decreases significantly. • Increases in aspirations and practices were strongest among those displaying high intrinsic motivation at baseline. Development economics has increasingly studied the role of diminished aspirations and other internal constraints that may form poverty traps. We present results from a controlled experiment to develop aspirational hope among 531 dairy farmers in Bolivia. Subjects in the treatment group participated in three coaching sessions that involved watching an inspiring documentary and participating in group workshops designed to augment aspirations related to dairy production. Results three months after baseline show an increase of 0.20σ in both an aspirational hope index and a business goals index, a 1.07σ increase in an index of quality-enhancing practices, but an insignificant increase in milk production. Increases in aspirations and best practices were strongest among those displaying high levels of intrinsic motivation at baseline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Aspirations likely mediate positive educational impacts from child sponsorship. • We find sponsorship increased children's self-esteem, optimism, and aspirations. • Aspirations impacts are strongest in Kenya, but statistically significant overall. • Estimates are robust to changes in counterfactuals and alternative specifications. The role of aspirations in facilitating movement out of poverty is a subject of increasing research in development economics. Previous work finds positive impacts from international child sponsorship on educational attainment, employment, and adult income. This paper seeks to ascertain whether the impacts of child sponsorship on educational outcomes may occur through elevated aspirations among sponsored children. Using an age-eligibility rule applied during program rollout to identify causal effects, we study whether international child sponsorship increases educational and vocational aspirations among a sample of 2022 children in Kenya, Indonesia, and Mexico. While effects are heterogeneous, and strongest in Kenya, we find that, averaging over the three countries, sponsorship increased indices of self-esteem (0.25sd), optimism (0.26sd), aspirations (0.29sd), and expected years of completed education (0.43 years). We find that sponsorship increases actual grade completion by 0.56 among children at the time of the survey, and mediation analysis suggests that the impact of sponsorship on aspirations is likely to mediate higher levels of grade completion. Our results contribute to a growing body of evidence indicating that the positive impacts of child sponsorship stem partly through elevating aspirations. More generally, our research contributes to a larger literature suggesting that the alleviation of internal constraints among the poor is a strong complement to addressing their external constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]