Moreover, we observe gender disparities in aspirations between male and female youths. Female youths aged 15-18 exhibit higher educational aspirations than their male peers. However, their aspirations decline and become lower than those of male youths when they reach 19-25 years old, irrespective of their activity. Conversely, male youths report higher career and migration aspirations than female youths across all ages and activities, except for young female students who demonstrate higher migration aspirations than young male students.

This paper presents two significant contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, it provides a comprehensive assessment of youth aspirations, utilizing data from nationally representative multi-topic household surveys conducted in three SSA countries. Our study offers robust insights into youth aspirations as they relate to occupational demand in SSA, providing valuable information for policy making aimed at aligning youth skills and migration desires with labor market opportunities. Secondly, by employing high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) based on pre-pandemic sampling frames derived from nationally representative face-to-face household surveys supported by the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA), the analysis links youth aspirations to a rich array of demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The inclusion of an aspiration module in household surveys allows for the tracking of aspirations over time and facilitates a deeper understanding of the youth and their families. This is crucial for comprehending how aspirations shape the future of young individuals and identifying the appropriate age for intervention in shaping aspirations, among other considerations.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 presents a literature review that helps to conceptualize aspirations. Section 3 describes the data, survey instruments, sampling strategy and statistical analysis. Section 4 presents descriptive results, while section 5 examines the empirical results. Finally, section 6 sheds light on the policy implications of the study and concludes.

# **2. Conceptualizing Aspirations: A Literature Review**

The notion of aspiration, in its broadest sense, refers to the ambition of achieving something that may or may not be within the range of outcomes that the individual’s situation allows to achieve (La Ferrara, 2019). Aspirations in fact, are not expectations: we may aim or hope to achieve something, yet not necessarily realistically expect to achieve it. Gorard et al. (2012) distinguish between aspirations as “what an individual _hopes will happen_ in the future” and expectations defined as “what an individual _believes will happen_ in the future”. This distinction underscores that expectations are rooted in an individual's perception of their future performance, considering their socioeconomic background and past and current academic performance (Mickelson, 1990). In contrast, aspirations are not necessarily confined by specific socioeconomic realities (Khattab, 2015) . Nevertheless, they remain inherently social, influenced by circumstantial factors, and subject to evolution over time.

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