Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the distributions of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the infant mortality rate, and the adult literacy rate across states in Mexico during the period 1940-2000. It also analyzes the hypothesis of convergence to a common level of per capita income, infant mortality, and adult literacy among states. The approach used here exploits both the time-series and cross-section dimensions of the data by tracking the evolution over time of the entire cross-section distributions. Through the estimation of transition matrices for each of these welfare indicators, we are able to analyze changes in the external …