This may interest the lists: Evidence of more poverty in Mexico July 23rd, 2006 by panchovilla
In the first year of the Vicente Fox administration, there was a serious attempt to develop an agreed-upon measure of poverty. A commission of specialists led by Enrique Hernández Leos, Miguel Székely, and other reputable scholars worked on the project. Before that, there was little consensus in academic and policy-making circles on poverty statistics in Mexico. Basically, each source had its own calculations and methodology, that the others suspected. And the party in power, the PRI, was known for cooking the books. For years, the INEGI (Mexico's official statistics agency) had been conducting a periodic survey of household income and spending (the ENIGH). Over time, the frequency of the survey became biennial and then — in the last couple of years — annual. The resulting database was to be used to compute the official poverty rate. There were some quirks, but the commission had the humility and good sense to agree on simple solutions. The sample doesn't give good information at the local or state level, but it is fine at the national level — and even at the male/female and urban/rural level. The rest here: http://machete2006.wordpress.com/
