Education and aspirations in a capability-based approach: the case of talibé children in Mauritania

The debate surrounding education in developing countries has mainly centred on the respective importance of school-related and family-related factors to both academic access and academic success. Studies on developed countries have already highlighted issues regarding the aspirations of children. In developing countries these issues are still under study. Our study fills in this gap. The aim of this article is to present an analysis of the determinants of children's aspirations. For this we use the theoretical framework of capabilities. This framework is innovative as it was not applied on this issue on developing countries. Our study concerns a case study of talibe children in Mauritania. We use a database on 116 children. The results indicate that cultural factors and parental involvement in children's schooling are decisive, in contrast to the quality of education and material living conditions, which have no significant effect.