Measuring the Race Gap in Mexico: Evaluating Labor Market Outcomes between Ethnically Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Household Heads
Date
2013
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Haverford College. Department of Economics
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eng
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Abstract
This paper investigates average gross quarterly work income from the 2010 issue of the Mexican National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (ENIGH) for a set of household heads in order to determine how respondents who self-identify as being racially indigenous fare relative to those who claim not to be indigenous. There is considerable anecdotal evidence that indigenous Mexicans do not do as well as their non-indigenous peers in the Mexican labor market, and there is also the possibility that indigenous Mexicans are actively discriminated against. Using the 2010 ENIGH survey I test whether or not indigenous ethnic status has explanatory power when it comes to determining gross quarterly income, and I then decompose average income differentials into portions determined by differences in endowments and differences in returns to endowments. I find that there is a statistically significant gap in average work income between indigenous and non-indigenous household heads, and that this difference is not entirely constituted by differences in endowments such as years of education, thus introducing the possibility that indigenous Mexicans face discrimination in the labor market.