Tag Archives: Multidimensional Poverty

Stratification of Poverty in Mexico

Posted on by

030n1eco-1

In Mexico, 80% of its population is deprived of at least one basic social and economic life dimension. Poverty in Mexico, regardless of how one measures it, is a widespread phenomenon that has grown on a par with population.

The poverty measure employed here focuses on seven categories, one of which is income, four others are cutoff indexes indicating whether individuals have access to health, education, food and social security and two others related to the quality of housing and access to basic housing services (such as running water or electricity). With these categories, a classification scheme for multidimensional poverty is constructed:

  • Extreme Multidimensional Poverty: Income below the necessary income to afford the most basics of life and being deprived of three or more dimensions.
  • Multidimensional Poverty: Income below the necessary income to afford the basics of life and being deprived of one dimension.

Distribution of poverty 2014 - Coneval - 3

Despite this graph showing data of 2014, if one explores previews data it will find that little has changed in the composition of poverty over time. This is highly problematic as only one in five Mexicans live out of poverty hinting to the fact that social mobility is close to nonexistent.

Intergenerational transmission of social and economic conditions is perhaps in the core of understanding Mexico’s economic underperformance. When intergenerational transmission of poverty is elevated, many high skilled individuals will not fully materialize their potential and thus their contribution to society will be suboptimal. Thus, the degree at which individual’s social and economic development level is shaped by non-individual decisions partially determines how resources and opportunities are allocated. This in turn affects long run economic dynamics.

How we understand poverty can importantly influence how we come to measure it, how we analyse it and how we create policies to fight it. Poverty in Mexico is a critical social problem that Mexican governments have widely ignored and failed to tackle.

by Diego de la Fuente

 

Note: Data on poverty gathered from Coneval 2014.

Poverty in Mexico II

Posted on by

 

Foto-post-mexicoMexico’s deep roots of poverty which have been systematically ignored by both the political and social spheres throughout its history.  Over 23 million people live with an insufficient income to buy the minimum basket of food, even if they disposed all their income to do so; over 60 million cannot afford the minimum basket of goods and services.

Poverty is unevenly distributed across the population: with the indigenous, the rural and the youth populations being the most severely affected. In terms of the multidimensional poverty measure elaborated by CONEVAL which captures income together with six other indicators (access to food, edu
cation, housing, health and social security and basic services -such as water and sewage-), in the year 2012, poverty affected:

  • 72.2% of the indigenous population (vs. 42.6% of the non-indigenous population).
  • 61.6% of the rural population (vs. 40.6% of the urban population).
  • 53.8% of the under 18 years old (vs. 40.7% of the population between 18 and 65 years).

Poverty is hard to contextualize because more than a concept it is a way of life that is suffered distinctly across populations: in the rural and urban areas, by different age groups, across sexes, regions, climates, cultures, and so on. Some additional numbers should serve to make the point.

child-poverty-in-mexico-streets

Indigenous:

    • Illiteracy rates are over four times higher than for the rest of the population, with 27% of the indigenous suffering it.
    • According to UNICEF, 33.2% of under 5 years old presented stunted growth.
    • Mortality rate for indigenous children is over 60% higher than for the general population.

Rural:

    • According to CONAPO, in the mainly rural state of Chiapas (58% of the population live in towns with 5,000 or less inhabitants): 37% of the population did not finish primary (elementary) school, 70% earn an income below two minimum wages, 25% live in housing with dirt floor, 18% cannot read or write.
    • In the state of Guerrero (49.7% of the population live in towns with 5,000 or less inhabitants): over 20% of the population lived without access to sewage, 29.8% didn’t have access to tubed water, 20% lived in dirt floor housing, 17% cannot read or write.

Children and youth:

The problem of children is as obscure as those of the other groups but in a different way.

    • infantil3According to INEGI, around three million Mexicans between 5 and 17 years old work (12.5% of the total), of which more than two thirds are boys. Of these, 44% do not receive an income, 28% earn an income below the minimum wage and only 8% earn more than 2 minimum wages for their work.
    • Furthermore, over 40% of these children work to complement family income or work; over 25% do so to pay for schooling materials and own expenses and only 5.1% did so to avoid schooling.

In Mexico, life is much harder for some that for others. However, it is striking is to find that poverty in Mexico is, more often than not, the result of exclusion. Looking at the level of need that large groups of the population have points towards the cyclical transmission of the problem across generations.

Paradoxically, the missing component for the country’s long waited economic flourishing lies precisely in whether the country is capable or not of unleashing individual potential across every group of society. Giving opportunities for development to the population would not only create a more just society but a much more dynamic one too.

by Diego de la Fuente