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This paper analyses how international remittances help households to alleviate their poverty. In this aim, two indigenous communities in Oaxaca and one urban in Michoacan are taken as reference, in each one, depth interviews to heads of households were done to inquire about migration, remittances, livelihoods and the income they generate in their daily activities. The income is compared with the costs of baskets of the food and well-being, to establish which goods and services can acquire the households and how this help them to improve when they having remittances. The results show that remittances are a substantial complement so that more households can buy food, and more of them can buy the welfare basket. With the first one, they get better lives, in some cases it is only while they have remittances, in the second one accumulates assets and long-term capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to present fuzzy sets theory as a reliable and straightforward methodology to measure poverty, which offers comparative advantages with respect to traditional methods. This paper also shows that fuzzy sets methodology is compatible with census data information to compute poverty indexes. Results of measuring poverty at state, municipal and town levels are presented for the case of Mexico and are compared with official results. Comparison reveals that fuzzy sets theory is an alternative that solve some of the methodological problems present in poverty lines and marginalization indexes, which makes it a helpful tool to evaluate and implement policies aimed at tackling poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous empirical research has shown that Mexico's Oportunidades program has succeeded in increasing schooling and improving health of disadvantaged children. This paper studies the program's potential longer-term consequences for the poverty and inequality of these children. It adapts methods developed in DiNardo, Fortin and Lemieux (1996) and incorporates existing experimental estimates of the program's effects on human capital to analyze how Oportunidades will affect future earnings of program participants. We nonparametrically simulate earnings distributions, with and without the program, and predict that Oportunidades will increase future mean earnings but have only modest effects on poverty rates and earnings inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies Mexican poverty levels by state during the 1992-2002 period, in order to evaluate the effect that the business cycle and governmental policies have had on poverty levels. We find that behind the business cycle and the urban poverty are inversely related and that institutional transfers reduce poverty both in urban and rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]