Poverty in Mexico: Its relationship to social and cultural indicators

This paper investigates associations of poverty with social and cultural indicators. In contrast to past studies that have primarily investigated the relationship of poverty to different levels of income, our approach introduces new variables that have not been examined in conjunction with this phenomenon. Through the application of multivariate statistical analysis and visual representations, we investigate associations between a set of seven variables and three official indexes of poverty. We contrasted two periods: the year 2000 and the year 2010. Both periods include a total of 10 variables for the 32 administrative provinces of the country. Contrary to common belief, the poorest provinces do not report the highest number of murders; thus, there is not a clear relationship between poverty levels and violent death. The number of historical sites per 100,000 inhabitants is weakly associated with poverty levels, which suggests that tourism-development strategies have failed in effectively tackling poverty. We provide evidence to suggest that the formula for calculating the unemployment rate should be revised because it does not properly describe the phenomenon of poverty. The partial effectiveness of the Oportunidades program in tackling poverty is demonstrated. The aim of this paper is more illustrative than prescriptive. Our results are intended to contribute to a discussion of the multidimensional analysis of poverty. Rather than prescribing the appropriate methods for measuring poverty, our contribution illustrates how multivariate analysis and visual representations can improve our overall comprehension of poverty.