Closing the Indigenous Gap in Mexico: A Comparative Report on Multidimensional Poverty Estimates from an Ethnic Perspective

Indigenous people in Mexico are most likely to be disadvantaged and live in poverty than nonindigenous people. This paper reports, from an ethnic perspective, on the findings of multidimensional poverty estimates to provide a deeper understanding of the forms in which indigenous people in Mexico experience poverty. The premise guiding this exercise is that the primary purpose for poverty measurement is to provide a continuous assessment of how to better target poverty in Mexico. The analysis utilizes Alkire and Foster’s specific multidimensional measurement framework. It also employs the Mexican official poverty measurement methodology. Both methods are applied to 2014 data provided by the Mexican National Household Expenditure Revenue Survey (ENIGH) to study the appropriateness of each methodology by comparing the results obtained. In addition, the analysis places special emphasis on the measures’ population decomposability and dimensional decomposability to explore the extent to which the privation of social rights influences the living conditions of Mexico’s indigenous poor to better target poverty alleviation efforts. Results showing higher levels of deprivation in the social rights domain for indigenous people than for non-indigenous people reveal the need for the Mexican government to articulate social policies that are specifically designed to tackle the social rights deprivations that the indigenous poor endure