INFORME FINAL DEL PRECESAM - El Colegio de México

family size (by 4.4% per additional family member) but decreases with family
members’ education (by 1.9% per person with secondary schooling (7-9 years)
and by 3.2% per person with 10 or more years of schooling). These results
underline the importance of education for rural poverty alleviation. Not
surprisingly, access to assets decreases poverty; however, other things being
equal, access to land does not significantly reduce the likelihood of being in
poverty. The effect of land on the probability of being impoverished is negative
but far from significant. Increasingly, the welfare of rural households turns on
human capital, not on land. The effects of migration on the likelihood of being in
poverty are also negative (both for internal and international migration); however,
they are not significant, once we control for family members’ education, assets,
ethnicity, and other variables in the table. Some variables have both direct and
indirect effects on poverty. For example, education both increases the likelihood
of migration and reduces the likelihood of being poor.
Effect on the
Variable
Probability of
Being Poor
Education (yrs) of household head -0.1%
(0.004)
Age of household head -0.1%
(0.005)
Age of household head squared 0.0%
(0.000)
Household head speaks an indigenous language
(d) 14.1%
(0.027)***
Number of people in the family 4.4%
(0.010)***
Number of household members with 7-9 years
edu -1.9%
(0.010)*
Number of household members with 10 or more
years edu -3.2%
(0.015)**
Index of assets owned in 2002 -7.6%
(0.012)***
land owned (ha/100 -1.2%
(0.037)
Pr(dus) -3.4%
(0.173)
Pr(dmex) -23.7%
(0.226)
N 1,727
(d) for discrete change of dummy variable from 0 to 1
t-statistics are in parentheses. *(**)(***) indicates significance at the
.10(.05)(.001) level