Unequal aspirations: socio-economic patterns of aspirational inequality in India

This paper examines poverty through the lens of what households aspire to own. Using panel data from the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey between 2014 and 2022, the study constructs an aspiration index and a realization index. The analysis reveals that aspirations are strongly influenced by income, education, gender composition, and occupational structure. The realization of those aspirations is, however, uneven and shaped by persistent disadvantages. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households are more likely to remain aspirationally constrained. The results are robust across fixed effects models and remain consistent when using Principal Component Analysis-based indices. A Mundlak adjustment further confirms the role of structural and household-level variables. The study highlights the value of moving beyond standard measures of deprivation to examine the gap between what households wish to achieve and what they are able to realize. This gap reflects a different layer of poverty that is both psychological and structural.