Mexico criticized for changing poverty metrics

By Nancy Caouette

MEXICO CITY (AA) – Changes to the government’s methodology for measuring household earnings to make the poor appear richer was criticized Monday by more than 60 Mexican anti-poverty associations.

Anti-poverty NGOs of the Citizen Action against Poverty collective claimed that “income revenues cannot be improved by changing statistical formulas”, according to a new report.

The country’s statistics agency, INEGI, published its 2015 edition Friday of the Survey of Socioeconomic Condition, a document used by government and NGOs to measure household earnings.

INEGI said that the way to collect family income was changed to “improve” the measure of income, claiming that people were under-reporting their earnings.

According to the agency, the increase of incomes stretch to an overall real increase of 11.9 percent in household earnings, reaching more than 30 percent increase in some states.

But NGOs said the figures are irrelevant because the measurement criteria have changed, making it impossible to make comparisons to previous years.

Citizen Action against Poverty also claimed that INEGI should have consulted and informed residents before implementing changes.

₺The agency should have reported this improvement since the decision was made in 2015 … to its owner: the Mexican society,₺ the anti-poverty collective said in its report.

The National Council for the Evaluation of Development Policy (Coneval), the public agency responsible for measuring poverty rates with data provided by INEGI, also criticized unilateral changes for poverty measurement.

“We don’t like the way the changes have been made. With the new methodology, we can’t compare with previous years anymore. We will not be able to say if the poverty situation is better or not,” said Coneval’s Executive secretary, Gonzalo Hernandez, said at a press conference, adding that INEGI’s changes will increase “suspicion” toward public institutions.

In 2014, Coneval put the poverty rate in Mexico at 46.2 percent of the population, an increase of 0.7 percent compared to 2012.