 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | August 2005 
World Bank: Urban Poverty Unchanged
 Morgan Lee - Associated Press
An economic shift away from agriculture has helped reduce rural poverty, but Mexico still faces staggering numbers of critically poor people in urban areas where low wages and unemployment are prevalent, the World Bank reported.
"The agricultural income has dropped a lot," said Isabel Guerrero, director of the World Bank for Mexico and Colombia. "However, the nonagricultural income has increased in an important way and the transfers ... such as remittances, have increased."
Reducing entrenched poverty in urban areas has proven much more difficult, with no change in extreme poverty levels that can effect nutrition between 2000 and 2004, according to the study of income and social protection for the Mexican poor.
"In our urban report we see that part of this is a lack of networks and of contacts for the poor when they search for work, the stigma of coming from a violent neighborhood ... a lack of access to transportation and child care and the low quality of education," Guerrero said.
A shortage of jobs pushes many of Mexico's urban poor into self-employment in menial jobs, beyond the reach of government social services in the past.
Meanwhile, a large portion of government spending on health and pension benefits are directed to workers in the formal private and public sectors. As a result, relatively few resources reach the poorest Mexicans, the study found.
The World Bank cited the potential to reach out to Mexico's poorest through a new federal health insurance system, Popular Insurance. But the program, open to the self-employed, was too new to evaluate.
Despite progress on extreme poverty, Francios Bourguignon pointed out that Mexico still has a yawning gap between rich and poor.
"Latin America is the most unequal region on the planet," he said. "And Mexico is one of the country's that is most unequal in the region."
The new study was the fourth report the World Bank has conducted on poverty in Mexico, and the second the Mexican government has allowed to be publicized. The unpublished reports were completed in 1994 and 1999.
Attending a presentation of the report, President Vicente Fox said, "Poverty does not disappear because you hide it." |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us