Time-use and Income: A Trivariate Relative Poverty Surface

Understanding poverty and well-being requires moving beyond income-based measures to account for how work and time are organized within households. While income and unpaid work sustain household living standards, in combination with leisure they determine how these standards are produced and experienced at the individual level, yet the two time dimensions remain largely absent from conventional poverty measurement. To assess living standards and set poverty thresholds we determine a bivariate relative poverty line on the household level and advance this approach to a trivariate poverty surface on the individual level. We base this measure on non-parametric multivariate quantiles. Using the 2018 Mexican National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure reveals substantial deprivation overlooked by income based measures. At the household level, 17.89% are bidimensional poor but located above the univariate thresholds. At the individual level, 26.9% are trivariate poor but above univariate thresholds, with pronounced intersectional differences. Trivariate deprivation is systematically associated with education, age, gender, and ethnicity. The resulting poverty surface further allows us to identify binding constraints and discuss pathways out of poverty in relation to social and ecological sustainability.