An Asset Index Proposal for Households in Mexico Applying the Mixed Principal Components Analysis Methodology

The development of assets indices has grown as an alternative to measure wealth from different generations in the evaluation of social mobility. A proposal of the development of an asset index is presented using the GSVD-based mixed principal components analysis (PCAMix package in R). The contribution rests in the combination of both numerical and categorical data and the integration of the simultaneous effect of these variables in the index. It was used in profiling the Mexican households according to the information from the 2018 National Household Income and Expenditure and the determination of the Gini coefficient to evaluate the inequality of distribution at the state level. Results show a high level of disparity in the distribution of assets with only 0.01% of the households possessing 40% or more of the assets included in the index, being the southern region where greatest challenges for ascending social mobility.© Springer Nature