What Determines Poverty in Mexico?: A Quantile Regression Approach

Diskussionsbeiträge des Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research (IAI) - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Abstract

According to official poverty estimates in Mexico, more than 50 percent of the population was poor in 2016, half of which could not even afford the basic food basket. Whereas most of the existing research analyses poverty focusing exclusively on average income or on the expected probability of being poor, this paper departs from this approach by analyzing income differences between households in rural and urban settlements using boosting additive quantile models. The models are estimated using a cross-sectional dataset containing information of more that 50 thousand households for the year 2015. The main results highlight the importance of analyzing poverty from an individual, household, community and regional perspectives and the relevance of accounting for heterogeneity of the effects on female- and male-headed households. The results point towards the existence of a life-income cycle and the relevance of education, social networks, income equality and quality of government to fight poverty. The findings also indicate that economic empowerment of women matters for pro-poor income policies to be effective and point towards the need of introducing a gender approach in the study on poverty.

Citation

Torres Munguía, Juan Armando; Martínez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada (2020). What Determines Poverty in Mexico?: A Quantile Regression Approach. Diskussionsbeiträge des Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research (IAI) - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 246. Retrieved from: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/217231

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