Aspirational mismatch among youth in Mexico: Local opportunities and household reference frames

Development policy often treats aspirations as a deficit to be raised. This article argues that the more relevant question is whether aspira-tions are aligned with the opportunity structures young people inhabit. Using the 2015 Mexican Social Mobility Survey, we construct an ordi-nal Aspirational Mismatch Index for 2,295 urban adolescents aged 12–18, comparing expected future income with a sex, age, and locali-ty-adjusted benchmark. Only 19.7% of youth are calibrated to this benchmark; 41.9% under-aspire and 38.4% over-aspire. The strongest pattern is intergenerational. Tutors who under-aspire relative to their locality increase youth under-aspiration by 6.7 percentage points, while over-aspiring tutors increase youth over-aspiration by 10.2 points. Social hierarchy also shapes mismatch since brown-skinned youth are 11.3 points more likely to under-aspire than comparable white-skinned youth. The findings recast aspirations as relational, so-cially transmitted, and stratified.