Food Well-Being in Older Adults: Effects of a Universal Non-contributory Pension in Mexico

One of the few universal programs in Latin America is the Food Pension for Adults Older than 68 (PAAM) of Mexico City, which aims to reduce food insecurity while generating food well-being among that age group. Previous evaluations and studies have concluded that the program has a low effect on food security because of a lack of targeting on the poorest and most-vulnerable people. For this reason, the goal of this study was to determine the effects of the program by homogenous groups, based on their socioeconomic and health characteristics, because it is possible that a program could affect subgroups of participants differently. We used data from the EVPAAM survey (2016), in three stages. In the first stage, we used clustering to identify homogenous subgroups; in the second stage, we used propensity scores matching; and in the third stage, we estimated the program’s impact in each cluster. Results show that the apparent low impact of the PAMM in the clusters cannot be attributed to the program’s universality but to the profound food insecurity and to problems with motor skills and comorbidities in this age group; therefore, the program could not improve food well-being in all subgroups.