THE PREVALENCE OF RURAL POVERTY IN MEXICO

This paper provides a profile of the poor in Mexico based on 1989 data from INEGI's Income-Expenditure Survey. Due to a crisis-ridden agricu ltural sector, rural wage-workers and campesinos are both the most num erous among the poor and face the greatest depth and severity of pover ty. Not unrelated, there is also significant poverty among the self-em ployed in nonagricultural sectors. These facts underscore the importan ce of explicitly integrating poverty-reduction objectives into Mexico' s strategy of development and carefully targeting programs at the most severely poor, especially those in agriculture.