Rural inequality, agricultural income and retention in upper secondary education in Mexico.

Abstract

Retention in upper secondary education is one of the main challenges facing the Mexican education system in rural areas. The objective was to estimate the effect of household agricultural income on the probability of school retention among young people aged 15 to 17, using microdata from the 2016–2024 National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (ENIGH) and Logit models with robust standard errors and fixed effects per year. The results indicate that agricultural income loses statistical significance when controlling for total income, parental education, youth employment, and socioeconomic status. Educational scholarships, total income, and parental education proved to be robust determinants. It is concluded that rural school retention depends more on household economic capacity and institutional support than on the agricultural origin of income.