Gender, Age, and Household Headship: Mexico’s Triple Threat for Deprivation.

Although female-headed households are argued to be the poorest of the poor in Latin America, little is known about the impact of age on this disadvantaged group. Mexico provides a relevant testing ground to examine the potential deprivation that accompanies being an elderly female-head of household. Not only is Mexico facing an aging population, but its citizenry are doing so in a country weakened by economic crisis, government debt, and an unstable labor market. Thus, women who already face resource deprivation in their working years, stand to carry this burden into old age. This project uses a nationally representative data set from the Mexican Migration Project to evaluate the relative poverty of elderly female and male-heads of households. The analysis examines deprivation through the lens of relative poverty by directly assessing capital holdings with male-heads, and across different types of resources. Arguing that it takes more than just money for a household to survive, relative evaluations of physical, social, and human capital are included. This standpoint borrows heavily from the empirical work of development scholars and the theoretical work of Amartya Sen. This project seeks to make three main contributions to what we know about poverty and female-headed households. First, it seeks to untangle the discourse of deprivation surrounding female-headed households by disaggregating this population by age. Second, this work advances poverty analyses by providing a comprehensive assessment of differences across types of capital for this demographic. Finally, this work suggests social policies heed the compounded risk associated with gender, age, and household headship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]