The scope of consensual deprivation indices for Mexico: reliability, criterion validity and invariance analyses

Relative deprivation theory has been successfully and consistently applied for measuring poverty in many developed countries and to less extent in developing countries. This study uses data from two rounds from the ENCOVID19 survey and structural equation modelling to analyse from an empirical perspective the scope of the relative deprivation theory and the consensual approach to measure poverty in Mexico. The study employs an array of latent variable modelling methods to assess the degree of measurement error (reliability), criterion validity, and measurement invariance between two time points. The results show that the amount of error is satisfactorily low, and that the scores of the relative deprivation index lead to a reliable and valid classification of the poor and the not poor groups. The findings are consistent with recent calls made by the conceptual and empirical literature about the need of updating poverty data to improve the quality of the measurement of poverty.