Bridging the gap: educational aspirations and expectations in Latin American intermediate territories

This paper investigates empirically the role of child characteristics, household and territorial circumstances in shaping parents' educational aspirations and expectations for their children, and the alignment or gap between the two. It focuses on higher education and makes three main contributions to the literature. First, it expands the geographical focus of existing research, comparing Chile, Colombia and Mexico within the same study design and sampling frame. Second, it focuses on intermediate territories, that is, a functionally integrated group of municipalities comprising an urban core between approximately 15,000 and 380,000 inhabitants and its hinterland. Third, it studies the influence of context beyond children's school or neighbourhood, analysing territorial characteristics as the broader environment that frames a person's preferences and ideas about life. The findings show that parents' socioeconomic status and territorial characteristics are the key determinants of aspirations, expectations, and the feasibility gap in the three countries. This suggests that individual-level policies to increase household resources may not be sufficient for increasing educational aspirations, expectations and outcomes, unless combined with policies to increase local opportunities and reduce territorial inequalities.