3.3 Examining gender inequalities in factors associated with in-
3.3.4 Data
Sources
Based on the existing studies and research, we identify the factors theoreti-cally associated with income poverty and then we map the official sources to obtain this information for the case of Mexico.
Data on income for rural households come from the 2016 ENIGH con-ducted by the INEGI. The ENIGH is a nationally representative household survey conducted every two years with the aim of providing official statisti-cal information about the income and expenditures of the Mexican families in terms of its amount, source, and distribution (INEGI, 2016a). From the ENIGH we extract data to characterize the individuals and their households.
Information on the community and regional levels is found in the 2015 Intercensal Population Survey, the 2015 CNGMD, the 2015 ENCIG, the 2016 ENDIREH, the CENAPRED, the CONEVAL, the CONAPO and the human development index developed by the UNDP. More details on these sources can be found in CENAPRED (2020), CONAPO (2016), CONEVAL (2020), INEGI (2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016b, 2016c), and UNDP (2019).
Dependent variable
In order to generate information for the dependent variable, income-to-poverty ratio, household income is then divided by the corresponding poverty thresh-old. The official criteria for defining poverty in Mexico is established by the
CONEVAL. In accordance with these criteria, a person is considered to be poor if their income is below the total cost of both the basic food basket and the non-food basket, which embraces transportation, education, health, entertainment, among others. In contrast, a person is considered extremely poor if their income is not even sufficient to cover the cost of the basic food basket (CONEVAL, 2018, 2019).
For rural communities, these two poverty thresholds were respectively set at MXN$1715.57 and MXN$ 933.20 monthly per capita (CONEVAL, 2020). In this way, having as reference the official poverty threshold and considering the number of family members, an income-to-poverty ratio equal to one indicates that the family is living at the poverty line. Therefore, when the ratio of income-to-poverty is less than one, the household is considered to live under poverty, and when the income-to-poverty ratio is less than 0.544 (933.20 divided by 1715.57 per household member), the household is living in extreme poverty. In other words, the income-to-poverty ratio allows us to capture how far is income of a family from the poverty line. Summary statistics of the income-to-poverty ratio are shown in the following Table 3.12.
Table 3.12 Summary statistics of the income-to-poverty ratio
Mean SD Median Min Max
-Woman-headed households 1.46 1.12 1.17 0.00 8.19
-Man-headed households 1.54 1.41 1.13 0.00 10.90
Independent variables
The potentially associated economic, demographic, and social factors (inde-pendent variables in the model) are chosen from previous research on the matter and include characteristics at the individual, household, community, and regional levels (see Section 3.3.3).
In total, we identify 42 theoretical poverty risk factors, 15 of which cor-respond to the individual/household level, 20 at the community level, and seven related to the family’s region of residence.
The full list of independent variables included in the full model and their summary statistics is listed in the following Tables 3.13, 3.14, 3.15, and 3.15 both for the continuous and categorical covariates according to the sex of the household head.
Table 3.13 Summary statistics of continuous covariates in the model for women-headed households
Variable Mean SD Median Min Max
Individual- and household-level covariates
-Head’s age 53.31 16.87 52.00 21 90
-Weekly housework hours 20.94 14.41 20.00 0.00 70.00
Community-level covariates
-Emergencies due to weather 0.85 0.73 0.67 0.00 3.00
-Gini index 0.40 0.03 0.39 0.33 0.50
-Human development index 0.72 0.06 0.72 0.56 0.83
-Municipal functional capacities 0.30 0.15 0.29 0.00 0.75
-Women-to-men ratio of housework hours 1.76 0.42 1.69 1.20 3.42
-Women’s political participation 0.21 0.10 0.21 0.00 0.50
-Migration of women 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.00 0.14
-Migration of men 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.00 0.15
-Women’s household headship 0.25 0.05 0.25 0.13 0.37
-Women’s economically active population 0.28 0.10 0.28 0.08 0.46
-Men’s economically active population 0.66 0.07 0.67 0.43 0.80
-Women working in the primary sector 0.05 0.06 0.03 0.00 0.42
-Men working in the primary sector 0.29 0.20 0.26 0.00 0.84
-Women working in the secondary sector 0.16 0.09 0.13 0.02 0.49
-Men working in the secondary sector 0.30 0.11 0.28 0.03 0.64
-Women working in the trade sector 0.22 0.04 0.22 0.09 0.32
-Men working in the trade sector 0.12 0.04 0.12 0.01 0.23
-Women working in the service sector 0.55 0.09 0.54 0.27 0.80
-Men working in the service sector 0.28 0.12 0.25 0.05 0.66
Regional-level covariates
-Corruption 0.87 0.05 0.89 0.73 0.95
-Satisfaction with public services 0.40 0.09 0.40 0.24 0.54
-Violence against women and girls in the community 0.21 0.04 0.21 0.14 0.37
-Violence against women and girls at school 0.16 0.03 0.17 0.10 0.21
-Violence against women and girls in the workplace 0.22 0.04 0.22 0.16 0.30 -Violence against women and girls by an intimate partner 0.25 0.04 0.25 0.18 0.33 -Violence against women and girls in the family context 0.10 0.02 0.10 0.07 0.13
See Supplementary information 5.10 for definitions of independent variables.
Table 3.14 Summary statistics of categorical covariates in the model for women-headed households
Variable Categories N %
Individual- and household-level covariates
-Education level low* 2980 67.2
medium 1365 30.8
high 89 2.0
-Marital status single* 472 10.6
open union 463 10.4 married 816 18.4 separated 898 20.3 divorced 181 4.1 widowed 1604 36.2
-Indigenous origin yes* 1630 36.8
no 2804 63.2
-Social networks low* 2913 65.7
medium 407 9.2
high 1114 25.1
-Credit card yes* 578 13.0
no 3856 87.0
-Disability yes* 837 18.9
no 3597 81.1
-Type of household nuclear* 2170 48.9
single 885 20.0 extended 1320 29.8
other 59 1.3
-Access to food yes* 1157 26.1
no 3277 73.9
-Access to health services yes* 397 9.0
no 4037 91.0
-Dwelling with adequate quality and sufficient space yes* 558 12.6
no 3876 87.4
-Educational lag yes* 2145 48.4
no 2289 51.6
-Access to basic housing services yes* 1846 41.6
no 2588 58.4
-Access to social security yes* 2556 57.6
no 1878 42.4
Community-level covariates
-Social marginalization very low* 1431 32.3
low 1219 27.5
medium 983 22.2
high 732 16.5
very high 69 1.6
Reference categories are denoted with *.
See Supplementary information 5.10 for definitions of independent variables.
Table 3.15 Summary statistics of continuous covariates in the model for men-headed households
Variable Mean SD Median Min Max
Individual- and household-level covariates
-Head’s age 48.53 15.51 47.00 21 87
-Weekly housework hours 3.83 5.59 1.00 0.00 28.00
Community-level covariates
-Emergencies due to weather 0.83 0.69 0.67 0.00 3.00
-Gini index 0.40 0.03 0.39 0.30 0.50
-Human development index 0.72 0.06 0.72 0.55 0.87
-Municipal functional capacities 0.29 0.15 0.27 0.00 0.75
-Women-to-men ratio of housework hours 1.78 0.43 1.71 1.20 3.47
-Women’s political participation 0.21 0.10 0.21 0.00 0.52
-Migration of women 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.00 0.12
-Migration of men 0.04 0.02 0.03 0.00 0.13
-Women’s household headship 0.24 0.05 0.24 0.12 0.36
-Women’s economically active population 0.27 0.10 0.27 0.04 0.45
-Men’s economically active population 0.66 0.07 0.67 0.42 0.82
-Women working in the primary sector 0.05 0.06 0.03 0.00 0.42
-Men working in the primary sector 0.30 0.21 0.28 0.00 0.89
-Women working in the secondary sector 0.16 0.10 0.14 0.02 0.50
-Men working in the secondary sector 0.30 0.12 0.29 0.03 0.64
-Women working in the trade sector 0.22 0.05 0.21 0.09 0.32
-Men working in the trade sector 0.12 0.05 0.12 0.01 0.23
-Women working in the service sector 0.54 0.10 0.54 0.25 0.79
-Men working in the service sector 0.27 0.11 0.25 0.04 0.58
Regional-level covariates
-Corruption 0.86 0.05 0.88 0.73 0.95
-Satisfaction with public services 0.40 0.08 0.40 0.24 0.54
-Violence against women and girls in the community 0.21 0.04 0.21 0.14 0.37
-Violence against women and girls at school 0.16 0.03 0.17 0.10 0.21
-Violence against women and girls in the workplace 0.22 0.04 0.22 0.16 0.30 -Violence against women and girls by an intimate partner 0.25 0.04 0.25 0.18 0.33 -Violence against women and girls in the family context 0.10 0.02 0.10 0.07 0.13
See Supplementary information 5.10 for definitions of independent variables.
Table 3.16 Summary statistics of categorical covariates in the model for men-headed households
Variable Categories N %
Individual- and household-level covariates
-Education level low* 9289 62.4
medium 5187 34.9
high 401 2.7
-Marital status single* 584 3.9
open union 3391 22.8 married 9773 65.7 separated 470 3.2
divorced 127 0.9
widowed 532 3.6
-Indigenous origin yes* 5820 39.1
no 9057 60.9
-Social networks low* 7852 52.8
medium 1873 12.6
high 5152 34.6
-Credit card yes* 2290 15.4
no 12587 84.6
-Disability yes* 1995 13.4
no 12882 86.6
-Type of household nuclear* 10582 71.1
one-person 1227 8.2 extended 2963 19.9
other 105 0.7
-Access to food yes* 3244 21.8
no 11633 78.2
-Access to health services yes* 1857 12.5
no 13020 87.5
-Dwelling with adequate quality and sufficient space yes* 2225 15.0
no 12652 85.0
-Educational lag yes* 6175 41.5
no 8702 58.5
-Access to basic housing services yes* 6479 43.6
no 8398 56.4
-Access to social security yes* 9493 63.8
no 5384 36.2
Community-level covariates
-Social marginalization very low* 4722 31.7
low 3882 26.1
medium 3092 20.8
high 2829 19.0
very high 352 2.4
Reference categories are denoted with *.
See Supplementary information 5.10 for definitions of independent variables.
Once collected the list of variables from the abovementioned tables, we combined them to create a unified set of information (see Supplementary information 5.11 for a detailed description of this data integration process).
Posteriorly, we apply plausibility analysis, detected outliers, and removed
cases with missingness before modeling (a description of this data process can be found in Supplementary information 5.12). In sum, the final data set for the study on rural poverty is composed of information on 4,434 women-headed and 14,877 men-women-headed households. Each of these two sets of data contains 42 theoretical poverty risk factors describing the individual/house-hold, community, and regional levels. These data is freely available from Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21183271.