Just reminding a kid they're "left behind" is enough to kill their dreams and career goals on the spot.
SSRN · March 18, 2026 · 6430168
The Takeaway
In a field experiment with rural Chinese students, researchers found that 'priming' children to think about their identity as someone with migrant parents instantly lowered their reported aspirations. This reveals that the struggle of 'left-behind' children isn't just about resources, but an 'aspiration trap' triggered by the psychological weight of social labels.
From the abstract
This study examines how the internalized identity of being a “left-behind child” influences the aspirations of rural children in China. Utilizing a lab-in-the-field experiment with 474 students, we employ a priming technique to manipulate identity salience within a difference-in-differences framework. We find that exogenously increasing the salience of the left-behind identity significantly reduces children’s reported aspirations. This negative effect is particularly pronounced among students in