In Mexico 7 out of 10 Born in Poverty Will Die in Poverty

Capitalism has its claws deep into Mexico as a new report argues that seven out of 10 people living in poverty won't make it out of their condition and, in fact, the purchasing power of Mexican households has decreased in the last 25 years.

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“The social mobility situation in Mexico can be summed up like this: those who are born poor remain poor and those who are born rich remain rich,” states the report called “The 2018 Mexico: Social Mobility for Wellbeing,” published by the Espinosa Yglesias Study Center (CEEY) and presented Tuesday.

The study found that nine out of 10 Mexicans born in wealthy families will remain in that social class, and eight out of those won't have a lower income than their families at the time they were born.

Besides, the real purchasing power of the lower income households had decreased by 20 percent between 1992 and 2016. During the same time, that of the medium and high income households decreased by 18 percent.

“The social class is transfered from parents to children with a high frequency among those who are at the bottom and those at the highest point in the socioeconomic pyramid,” the report says.

In 2016, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Politics (Coneval) registered that 53.4 million Mexicans (43.6 percent of the total population) lived under the poverty line, out of which 7.6 million were living in extreme poverty.

That means that 70 percent of those 53.4 million, that is, 37.4 million, will remain under the poverty line unless there are some dramatic changes in the economy. “Mexico is a society in which the starting conditions determine the options for success of the people,” said Roberto Velez, head of the CEEY.

According to Velez, the lack of quality employment, education opportunities, access to health and social security in Mexico is fostering a country of first, second, third and fourth classes with little opportunity to “advance” through income scales.

“Dice are rigged since birth,” said Gabriela Ramos, director of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who also said the informal economy, to which many are pushed, hamper the ability of low income people to improve their social condition.