Understanding how violence impacts rural mexico: a cross sectional analysis
Abstract
Violence has negative impacts on the wellbeing of civilians, but it specifically has a stronger impact on the rural poor. In Mexico, the rural poor are often ignored in academic research and in policies that address violence, even though they have similar homicide rates to urban areas (Berlanga, Hernández, and Pérez, 2019; Villarreal, 2004). Mexico's census data from INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography) and crime data from CONAPO (National Council of Population) was used in an OLS regression model to understand the impact that violence, location, and other socioeconomic factors has on wellbeing, which is defined as making at least two minimum wages per person. While violence was not found to be significantly impactful when location was included in the model, education was found to have significant impacts on if many people made above that vulnerable income threshold. The large impacts that simply completing primary school can have on the income vulnerability of people within rural communities can set the pace for future research and policies focused on this impact. Further, this research gives increasing awareness of the complexity of the impacts of rural violence and provides a basis for future research.
Degree
M.S.