The Future They Envision: The Changing Work Aspirations of Filipino Children

Laguna, Elma

This paper investigates the work aspirations of Filipino children when they were 10 years old, and how it changes as they grow older by analyzing their answer to the question: “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. It also looks at the factors that influence, or limit, work aspirations of children. Specifically, the paper answers the following research questions:

What are the work aspirations of Filipino children, and do they vary by sex, family circumstances (i.e., household income, membership in conditional cash transfer program, having family member working abroad, etc), parent’s education and urban residence?
Does work aspiration change as children grow older?
What jobs remain consistently within their horizons of possibilities?

The analysis is based on the Longitudinal Cohort Study on the Filipino Child (LCSFC), a 15- year prospective longitudinal cohort study (2016-2030) launched by the United Nations Population fund (UNFPA-Philippines) in 2016. The multi-level study collected individual (index child and caregiver), household and community-level data using surveys, focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. The LCSFC addresses 13 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and aims to understand how the SDG agenda contributes to the welfare of the young population in the course of its 15-year implementation. The analysis will use the baseline data (2016/17 when children were 10/11 years), Wave 2 (2018), Wave 3 (2019), Wave 6 (2022) and Wave 7 (2024). We categorized work aspirations of children using the Philippine Standard Occupational Classification.

Analysis of baseline data shows that factors such as residence, having a family member working abroad are significantly associated with children’s work aspirations but sex was the most predictive variable with girls tending toward artistic and social jobs while boys toward realistic and enterprising jobs.