Vanishing Assets: Cumulative Disadvantage among the Urban Poor

Abstract

This article attempts to generate a new understanding of economic change and household responses in Mexico. It reflects on the changing conditions of survival and reproduction among the Mexican urban working poor in a socioeconomic context of diminishing income-generating opportunities. The author argues that rising poverty has had serious effects on dimensions (beyond economic) of the lives of the poor—in particular, the erosion of the capacity of the poor to maintain networks of social exchange. The author strongly argues in favor of diachronic analyses of economic transformations and their impact on household dynamics to capture social and family processes that are not fully understood by synchronic views of household life and livelihoods. The diachronic view allowed the author to show the limits of the strategies of survival and the inadequate explanations resulting from views that uncritically assume the endlessness of resources in the hands of the poor.