Aspiration failure: a poverty trap for indigenous children in Peru?

This paper aims to contribute to understand the mechanisms underlying the complex exclusion process of indigenous people in Peru, by analysing the role played by aspirations in the investment in education of indigenous children. To address these issues, the paper relies on a very rich data set, theYoung Lives data, and use an original instrument that allow to cast light on the causal relation betweenaspiration and educational outcomes. We find that aspiration failure is a channel of inequalitypersistence between indigenous and non-indigenous people, but that aspiration failure do not takes theform of a lack of aspiration. Indigenous children do not have internalized racial schemas about occupation or about their opportunities. However, the gap between their aspiration and their current socio-economic status is too large, in so far as it has a disincentive effect on forward-looking behaviour.