concept of an aspiration gap: relative to one’s initial situation rather than in absolute terms (Janzen et al. 2017; Dalton, Rüschenpöhler, and Zia 2018; Ross 2019; Garcia, Lensink, and Voors 2020; Bloem 2021). Annex 3 lists the measures of aspirations used by the empirical studies cited in this paper.

Surveys may include one or several domains of aspirations. By far, the most studied domains are education and jobs (e.g. Pasquier-Doumer and Risso Brandon 2015; Favara 2017; Roy, Morton, and Bhattacharya 2018; Carlana et al. 2018; García, Harker, and Cuartas 2019; Guyon and Huillery 2021). But studies also capture measures of aspirations in terms of other outcomes such as income, wealth, and social status (Bernard and Taffesse 2014; Kossec and Mo 2017); age of marriage and leadership potential (Beaman et al. 2012); housing (Galiani, Gertler, and Undurraga 2021); agricultural landholdings and remittances (Bloem et al. 2018); business outcomes (Dalton, Rüschenpöhler, and Zia 2018); and general life (Garcia, Lensink, and Voors 2020). When measuring several domains, researchers usually combine the index of each domain into an aggregate index of aspirations (Beaman et al. 2012; Bernard and Taffesse 2014; Bloem et al. 2018). While the aggregate index masks the contribution of each domain —which could be divergent— it is intended to capture the multidimensionality of aspirations and reduce the measurement errors of each domain, inherent to attitudinal measures (Bernard and Taffesse 2014).<sup>4</sup>

# **3.2. Conceptual issues: Interpreting measures of different concepts of aspirations**

The wording and concepts invoked in the survey questions vary substantially across surveys, leading to measuring different concepts under the same label of “aspirations.” In annex 3, which highlights the measures used in 26 empirical studies in economics on aspirations, we identify measurement of 13 different underlying concepts, either one concept at a time or a mix of several if the measure is based on several questions. Most studies measure aspirations as wishes or wishes without constraints — asking the level of an aspiration the respondents would like to reach, including in a scenario without any obstacle. Other studies capture more tangential concepts such as expectations or sufficient needs, or mix questions about aspirations as wishes with concepts such as belief, preferences, hopes, and social norms. Sometimes, differences in wording and underlying concepts are motivated by translation

> 4 Dimensions are usually bundled together and weighted equally when aggregated, but alternative approaches exist. Beaman et al. (2012) keep separate one dimension of their four measured aspiration domains (aspirations for leadership) because it correlates much lower with the other three (educational attainment, future occupation, age of marriage after 18), which they aggregate together. Bernard and Taffesse (2014) propose a weighting system based on what respondents value most, which they express by allocating beans over pictures representing dimensions of aspirations during the survey (income, wealth, education of their eldest child, and social status). They find that respondent weight differently the relative importance of various domains, but that the weighted index does not correlate much more strongly with expected correlates (educational level, age, gender, and investment behavior) than the non-weighted index. They recommend, however, incorporating the weighting in surveys given the ease of implementation and the possibility of resulting in larger differences in results for other studied samples than theirs.

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