Within-country poverty convergence: evidence from Mexico

Trends in aggregate growth and poverty reduction hide a multiplicity of development processes at the local level. The analysis reported this paper exploits unique panel dataset maps covering almost 2400 municipalities Mexico spanning 22 years, first, to test hypothesis that there is within-country income convergence. Second, through decomposition convergence elasticity, investigates whether convergence, if it exists, has translated into In context overall stagnant economic since 1990, finds evidence both among municipalities. As cause these, results point combination positive performance poorest or deteriorating more well-off Redistributive programs such as cash transfers poor households have played an important role driving these by bolstering municipalities, while also inducing progressive changes distribution income.