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Home gardens are recognised in the literature for their contribution to food security, yet the process by which agrobiodiversity and household characteristics mediate this relationship is less well understood. This paper contributes to fill this research gap by drawing on a multi-site case study in the Yucatán region in Mexico. By applying regression analysis, the significance of the association between home garden diversity and food security is confirmed. Plant diversity is found to have a positive association with food consumption scores and the frequency of vegetable intakes. The number of animals used for food purposes is also found to have positive and significant associations with food consumption scores and frequency of meat intakes. However, the dimension and the significance of these positive associations were found to vary among communities and quantiles of the distribution of food security measures. In the households studied, younger individuals and better-educated people, males and Spanish speakers were more likely to engage in jobs in urban areas. Engagement in urban jobs was found to involve complementarities with the overall plant diversity of home gardens, but also trade-offs with the diversity of vegetables and other herbs used for food purposes and with the abundance of animals raised for food purposes.
This paper aims to contribute to two areas where the empirical research is still scarcepoverty dynamics and indigenous peoples' welfare. The coverage area of this study is Mexico, a country where indigenous people represent 9.5% of the total population and face a significant gap in their welfare levels in comparison to non-indigenous individuals. By following a components approach, poverty is found to be a chronic phenomenon in Mexico with the chronic component accounting for 75% of the total poverty. Furthermore, by applying a threefold Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and Tobit regressions, the analysis highlights some factors that contribute to explaining the disadvantaged living conditions faced by indigenous people. These issues include: Lower schooling endowments and returns, lack of adequate infrastructure, fewer economic opportunities either because of labor discrimination or the lack of jobs and access to credit, as well as higher vulnerability to natural disasters.
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