Ethnicity and intelligence in children exposed to poverty environments: An analysis using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition

• Published in: Intelligence (Norwood) 2019-01, Vol.72, p.49-58
• Main Authors: Laborda, Leopoldo, Elosúa, M. Rosa, Gómez-Veiga, Isabel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Body height; Child poverty; Children; Cognitive ability; Ethnic groups; Ethnicity; Home health care; Indigenous children; Indigenous peoples; Intelligence; Matrices; Minority & ethnic groups; Nutrition; Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition; Poverty; Rural communities; Rural environments; Rural populations; Statistical analysis
• ISSN: 0160-2896; 1873-7935
• DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2018.11.008

Given the correlation between poverty and belonging to certain ethnic groups found by previous studies, the present study intends to apply a statistical technique to analyze the differences in intelligence on the basics of Raven's Coloured Progressive Matrices performance between indigenous children and non-indigenous children from poor rural populations when indigenous children are “treated” as (equated) non-indigenous children in terms of nutrition, maternal education and schooling. This cross-sectional study used the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to construct a counterfactual with which to compare both groups, distinguishing between differences due to certain characteristics of the child and those differences that are unexplained by the previous differences. The present study was carried out with a sample N = 1804 of 1460 non-indigenous and 344 indigenous children, aged between 5 and 11 years, from poor rural environments in Mexico who participated and completed a reduced version of the Raven's test of intelligence. The results indicate that, when cognitive performance was equated by age and height of the child, education level of the head of the family, help in school work, and care at home, the observed differences in such performance without being equated was reduced. •This study used the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to construct a counterfactual.•Poor indigenous children are “treated” (equated) as non-poor indigenous children.•The differences in Raven Test without being equated were reduced by 0.840 points.