ACTUAL AND EXPECTED DEPRIVATION - NORTHERN MEXICO IN THE 1980S - A RESEARCH NOTE

This paper examines the relationship between objective and subjective effects on household spending in a situation of economic crisis based on data derived from a survey conducted in 1985 in the industrial city of Monterrey in northern Mexico. The analysis focuses first on histor ical developments in income through a longitudinal study of income dis tributions since these can be considered to be the historical conditio ns of the two types of deprivation studied. Using family budgets, we w ere able to describe actual and expected effects of the crisis in term s of the reductions in spending that it provoked. Finally, using regre ssion analyses, the relations between both kinds of effects and the pe rsonal history of the respondents, taken to represent the individual c ounterpart of historical conditions, are examined. Neighborhood SES an d occupational level are found to be significant predictors of both ob jective and subjective deprivation. The best predictor of subjective e ffects are the actual ones. The phenomenon of relative deprivation app ears to be conditioned by the context of societal development in north ern Mexico.