“We were interested in looking at whether such interventions influence parents’ expectations for their children’s education and occupation, which can promote social mobility. Because there are huge disparities between boys and girls in Bangladesh, we also wanted to see if it affected the gender gap,” said lead author Alejandro Montoya Castaño. He was a doctoral candidate in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois when conducting the research.

The study focused on a multifaceted intervention program called Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee-Targeting the Ultra Poor (BRAC-TUP), which follows a “graduation approach” that provides families with a livestock asset (such as a cow or goat), technical training, life-skills coaching, and a monetary stipend. The goal of the program is to help families gradually move out of extreme poverty, and it does not specifically target education.

The researchers analyzed data from a survey of 7,300 households from 1,309 villages in 13 of the poorest districts in Bangladesh, conducted at three time points over four years. Parents were asked to state which occupation they expected for their eldest son and daughter.

They found that after two years, parents who participated in the BRAC-TUP program were 6 to 10% more likely than a control group to envision their sons pursuing aspirational occupations that require a high school degree (such as government jobs or teachers). Their expectations that girls perform traditional occupations (household, on-farm work) did not change.

“Our results can serve as a caution for these types of development projects, as they can accidentally reinforce traditional gender roles. It’s possible that as the households receive more resources, it becomes more viable for girls to work in the home. For example, they can work as home-based entrepreneurs, processing rice or selling milk and yogurt,” said co-author Mary Arends-Kuenning, professor in ACE.

These results run counter to other Bangladeshi programs that aim to promote education for women, such as a secondary school scholarship program that pays for girls to attend school, she added.

Bangladesh is home to the microlending movement, including Grameen Bank, founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Some women work with microlenders, or with programs like BRAC, and they travel independently around villages and can serve as role models for others. But cultural constraints generally restrict women’s activities outside the home, and changing gender norms takes a long time, Arends-Kuenning said.

Even for boys, higher aspirations do not necessarily translate into action.

“We saw some effects related to changes in expenses on education, but we didn’t see any tangible effects such as an increase in the percentage of children enrolled in high school. However, the study is limited to a few years, and we asked only about expectations for the eldest child. It’s possible there will be stronger effects for subsequent children,” Montoya Castaño said.

Other research has shown that these types of projects do help get people out of poverty, but they don’t work for everyone, Arends-Kuenning said. About 30% of households in the study lost the asset (livestock) after a few years and went back to the standard of living they had before the intervention, unable to escape the poverty trap.

The researchers suggest that the program’s training and coaching components could be strengthened to facilitate change.

“Households in the BRAC-TUP program became more aware of political issues and health topics. We imagine that interventions which include coaching and training could produce other significant effects, and those parts are not very expensive in terms of the whole treatment. It might make a difference if these programs explicitly address gender norms, and include more emphasis on career paths for girls,” Arends-Kuenning concluded.

The paper, “How does a rural poverty alleviation program affect parents’ aspirations about their children? Evidence from BRAC-TUP in Bangladesh,” is published in the Journal of Development Studies [DOI:10.1080/00220388.2025.2607412}.