IntroductionMexico's indigenous peoples are amongst the country's most vulnerable and marginalized. While they account for only 9 percent of the total population, they are overrepresented among the poor. According to the Mexican National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (or CONEVAL, its acronym in Spanish), the percentage of indigenous peoples who live in poverty is nearly double that of the general population: the rates were 70.3 percent versus 38.6 percent in 2016 (CONEVAL 2016). This disparity in the prevalence of poverty raises the following questions. Why are ethnic wage inequalities so pronounced in Mexico? Where are the pay differences between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples most present? If differences in human capital characteristics such as education and work experience were removed, would they still fare worse than their non-indigenous counterparts? If so, what kinds of policies could help bridge the present gap?The concentration of poverty among indigenous populations is increasingly being recognized in the development literature (Garcia-Aracil and Winter 2006;

Indigenous people in Mexico are more likely to be disadvantaged and live in poverty than non‐indigenous people. To better understand the forms in which indigenous people in Mexico experience poverty, this article reports, from an ethnic perspective, on the findings of multidimensional poverty estimates. The premise guiding this exercise is that the primary purpose of poverty measurement is to provide a continuous assessment of how to better target poverty. The analysis utilizes Alkire and Foster's (AF) specific multidimensional measurement framework. It also employs the Mexican Official Poverty Measure (MPM). Both methods are applied to 2014 data provided by the Mexican National Household Expenditure Revenue Survey (ENIGH) to explore the extent to which the privation of social rights influences the living conditions of Mexico's indigenous poor to better target poverty alleviation efforts. Results showing higher levels of deprivation in the social rights domain for indigenous people than for non‐indigenous people reveal the need for the Mexican government to articulate social policies that are specifically designed to tackle the social rights deprivations that the indigenous poor endure.

Female labor force participation is important for women, children, and societies, but also may have unintended impacts including an increased risk of intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV is a global health, human rights, and development problem with far-reaching economic and societal consequences. Mexico has a very high prevalence of IPV: 43.9% of Mexican women have reported experiencing IPV at the hands of their current partner. The literature on women’s economic participation reveals mixed evidence on whether women’s employment is associated with higher levels of IPV or whether it is protective against IPV. As the effect of women’s work operates differently across contexts, we aim to estimate the effect of women’s employment on their risk of experiencing IPV in rural and urban Mexico. Utilizing the nationally representative 2016 Mexican National Survey on the Dynamics of Household Relationships (ENDIREH), we employ propensity score matching (PSM) to address the potential selection bias between women who are employed and/or receiving a cash transfer with women who are not. We additionally implement inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) to explore this relationship and compare the results with the PSM findings. Three different measures of women’s economic participation are analyzed: whether they had engaged in any productive work outside of the home in the past year, whether they received conditional cash transfers through Mexico’s Prospera program, and whether they received Prospera and worked. Given the high levels of IPV in Mexico and the greater levels of economic participation borne of an increased number of women in the workforce, our results have important potential implications for targeting support to survivors of violence who receive cash transfers and undertake employment in both urban and rural areas.

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