Scholastic dreams: How does disaster damage impact educational aspirations and outcomes among post-tsunami youth in Indonesia?

Educational aspirations are linked to educational and labor market outcomes. Exposure to acute or chronic adversity may affect aspirations, but we know little about these relationships. In this paper, I use longitudinal survey data from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) to examine how exposure to damage from the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 impacts educational aspirations and attainment of children in Indonesia. I found that children held very high aspirations, especially compared to prevailing post-secondary education rates. Damage exposures at the household and community levels negatively affected children’s educational aspirations to different extents: housing damage effects persisted, whereas community-level damage effects attenuated over time. The latter is likely related to the successful reconstruction efforts post-disaster. Previously reported aspirations also had strong associations with educational attainment. These findings contribute important insights to scholarship on educational aspirations across the life course and children’s resilience post-disaster.