Economics: Data load for plans to tackle poverty
According to Coneval’s latest evaluation of social policy, multidimensional poverty results have been decidedly mixed over the past decade. The number of people living in poverty has risen by almost 6 million in the past decade in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and Mexico’s 2009 recession. While poverty eased lower in 2016 on the strength of increased employment and wages, those gains are also at risk from the possibility of economic setbacks in an uncertain international environment and the extent to which heightened inflation in 2017 eroded real family incomes.
One clear success story has been the extent to which extreme poverty has been trending lower since 2010, in large part thanks to a reduction in deprivation levels in access to healthcare, education, housing and public services, as well as conditional cash transfer programs. Progress has been especially pronounced in the case of access to education and healthcare, although major challenges remain on both levels. In terms of education, the net enrollment rate rose last year to 98.4% for primary studies and 86.2% for secondary schooling. However, even support programs and access to quality education remained skewed away from those who are most vulnerable; this is evidenced by the fact that a student’s chance to receive scholarships rises depending on how high his or her family is on the income decile scale. The number of people deprived of access to any public health service was more than halved since 2008, thanks largely to the Seguro Popular program in which more than 55 million people are enrolled and which accounts for almost half of all public coverage. But that program offers far more limited services than the contributory social security programs IMSS and ISSSTE.
Access to social security is the deprivation category that affects the largest number of people (68.4 million at last count). Social security in Mexico remains linked to formal sector employment and payroll tax deductions. This effectively excludes the poorest and most marginalized people from protections for dealing with accidents, illness, disability, widowhood, old age or pregnancy, a lack of coverage which, in principle, entails a violation of constitutional guarantees.
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