Inequality and teenagers’ educational aspirations in urban Mexico

The goal of this paper is to assess in which way socioeconomic and other family characteristics affect youth’s aspirations for education in urban Mexico. The theoretical approach, grounded in Sen´s capabilities approach, incorporates recent developments in two strands of the literature: a) one that assesses the impact of economic mobility on individuals´ aspirations and on the impact of aspirations on individuals behavior; and b) one that stresses the importance of agency, both, as a goal itself for human development and because its instrumental value for people to achieve whatever goals or values they regard as important. What follows presents the theoretical approach and an empirical application to Mexico DF. The paper elaborates on the plausible impact of the findings for the intergenerational transmission of inequality in LAC countries.