Life in a Mexican village: A SAM perspective

Abstract This article employs a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) to analyse the economic structure of a migrant‐sending rural economy. A village SAM is constructed using 1982 household data from a major migrant‐sending village in Central Mexico. The village matrix multiplier and its decompositions are derived from the SAM and are utilised in policy experiments on the production, value added, income, and investment flows of the village. The results highlight the central role of both internal and international migration in the village economy, as well as the importance of targeting directly anti‐poverty policies toward the landless. Notes Irma Adelman is a Thomas Forsyth Hunt Chair Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley. J. Edward Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics, University of California, Davis. Stephen Vogel is a Graduate Student of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California at Berkeley.