TY - JOUR
T1 - Gender inequality and gender-based poverty in Mexico
AU - Ramos, Minerva E.
AU - Gibaja-Romero, Damian Emilio
AU - Ochoa, Susana A.
N1 - © 2020 The Authors.
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - The objective of a country's government is to increase the well-being of its population. For this reason, a precise measure of inequality and poverty contributes to better development of economic and public policies to reduce the former and latter, respectively. Therefore, in recent years, various indexes have been developed to measure and compare inequality and poverty. In the case of Mexico, the Gini and Theil indexes are used to measure both problems. However, they are criticized for the overvaluation that they generate on specific population segments. For a better measurement, this paper calculates and investigates the relationship between the Palma index (inequality) and the Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke index (poverty). In addition to reducing the overvaluation problem, the indexes mentioned allow us to perform an analysis by gender and employment type (salaried and self-employed). The main results do not diverge from those already found through traditional measures. In general, a high level of inequality exists. However, our paper contributes to the literature by identifying both problems by gender. Men present greater inequality than women, whereas women present greater poverty than men. Finally, a positive, albeit weak, correlation exists between both problems, which means that poverty can be combated by combating inequality. Inequality; Poverty; Palma index; FGT index; Social Sciences; Economics; Economic Development.
AB - The objective of a country's government is to increase the well-being of its population. For this reason, a precise measure of inequality and poverty contributes to better development of economic and public policies to reduce the former and latter, respectively. Therefore, in recent years, various indexes have been developed to measure and compare inequality and poverty. In the case of Mexico, the Gini and Theil indexes are used to measure both problems. However, they are criticized for the overvaluation that they generate on specific population segments. For a better measurement, this paper calculates and investigates the relationship between the Palma index (inequality) and the Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke index (poverty). In addition to reducing the overvaluation problem, the indexes mentioned allow us to perform an analysis by gender and employment type (salaried and self-employed). The main results do not diverge from those already found through traditional measures. In general, a high level of inequality exists. However, our paper contributes to the literature by identifying both problems by gender. Men present greater inequality than women, whereas women present greater poverty than men. Finally, a positive, albeit weak, correlation exists between both problems, which means that poverty can be combated by combating inequality. Inequality; Poverty; Palma index; FGT index; Social Sciences; Economics; Economic Development.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03322
DO - 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03322
M3 - Article
C2 - 32051879
AN - SCOPUS:85078668089
SN - 2405-8440
VL - 6
SP - e03322
JO - Heliyon
JF - Heliyon
IS - 1
M1 - e03322
ER -