On Monday, November 25th, the civil organization “Mexico, how are we doing?” (https://mexicocomovamos.mx/) presented the Social Progress Index 2024 without any pleasant surprises for the poor population and the states co-opted by the violence that prevails in the country.
44% of the population of Mexico lives in states with low incomes. Therefore, 4 out of 10 Mexicans live in a lag in prosperity.
The Mexican southeast (Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, Chiapas, and Oaxaca) continues to have a significant lag in the foundations of well-being and improvement of the lives of families.
This is despite the multimillion-dollar investments of the López Obrador government in its emblematic works such as the Maya Train, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, and other infrastructure works.
The team of specialists who presented this research and data analysis work highlighted that the Mexican government has failed in the provision of basic services that seek social progress, such as health, education, and public safety, and leaves the burden of these expenses to Mexican families.
“The map of social progress clearly shows us that the southeast is static and with a significant lag,” said Sofía Ramírez Aguilar, from the organization that leads this study.
“From 2015 to 2023 we have advanced five points out of a hundred. As you can see, there is a very significant lag in the southeast region,” she said.
She stressed that the first message of these results is that the State fails to guarantee fundamental rights such as education, health, and security, and delegates it to the pockets of families.
Mexican families subsidize their own products and services
Not only is it a very expensive problem for families who work to get ahead, but progress is financed from their pockets, with their income and salaries from their work.
“Families themselves provide services from their own pockets, it is a subsidy that they allocate to their needs to be able to survive; when health, education, and security services must be provided by the State,” she stressed.
The team that presented the Social Progress Index 2024 was made up of Sofía Ramírez, Mariana Campos, from the organization México Evalúa; Axel Eduardo González, Adriana García, Alexandra Haas, and the journalist Javier Risco, who moderated the virtual event.
The group bases its study of the Social Progress Index on 49 social indicators that help identify the basic dimensions of the services that the State must provide to improve the quality of life of Mexican families.
However, it is undeniable that the government of Mexico does not take care of health in a preventive manner.
There are deficiencies in education because the resources for teacher training have been withdrawn, violence in the states prevents national and foreign investments that could come through nearshoring, and monetary transfers from the programs are not effective in favor of families.
The people where the beneficiaries live lack the infrastructure for their prosperity.
“The Federal Government has delegated the expenses in health, education, security, and housing to Mexican families,” said Mariana Campos.
“We see this in the budget items to address the three pillars of social progress: in health, it decreased from 2.8% of GDP to 2.4% in the next year; in education, it went from 3.1% to 2.9%, and in security, even when the country is burning with violence, the budget is only .5%. of the GDP,” the expert declared.
“In the Mexican southeast, two-thirds of the population in Chiapas and Oaxaca do not have access to health services at all,” she added.
In education, even though it is one of the levers and drivers of development, there is a huge wage gap between the salaries of those who studied for a postgraduate degree and those who have a bachelor’s degree, and even more so, those who have a bachelor’s degree and those who have a high school education.
In this study, the country obtained a score of 65 out of 100 possible points.
“Mexico has the potential to increase this social progress, but it has to go faster,” reiterated Mariana Campos.
“After the Covid setback, we have to speed up the process, I know it is complex, but there is infrastructure where the private sector can participate to improve living conditions, services, the value chain,” she explained.
“There are states that are powerful in tourism or industry. The government has to see what it does with the entities where there is a lot of lag, it cannot leave them as they are.”
Among the deficiencies they detected in the lagging states are the lack of legal certainty, and respect for the rule of law, and there is a lack of industrial warehouses, electric power services, qualified human capital, transparency and there is violence from organized crime.
With information from mexicocomovamos.mx/
TYT Newsroom
