MEXICO CITY (CN) — Mexico has experienced “historic” drops in rates of poverty and inequality, the country’s president said Friday.
“There is less poverty and less inequality in our country,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said during his morning press conference in Mexico City. “This shows that our strategy has worked.”
He cited data analyzed by Mexico’s National Council of Social Development Policy Evaluation (Coneval) that show that the number of Mexican citizens living in poverty fell from 52.2 million in 2016 — two years before he took office — to 46.8 million in 2022.
Coneval issues its poverty measurement report every two years, basing its analyses on a survey of household earnings and expenditures from Mexico’s national statistics institute Inegi.
“And surely in the 2024 report will be lower,” he said, pointing to a graph that showed that the poverty rate fell from 43.2% in 2016 to 36.3% in 2022.
The graphs he presented did not include the data from the 2018 and 2020 reports, which showed the poverty rate to be 41.9% and 43.9%, respectively.
“They aren’t going to be able to take from us this happiness that there are fewer people in poverty in the country,” he said, referring to his political opposition.
The 2022 numbers were 6.9% lower than those during the term of his immediate predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto, 9.8% lower than during Felipe Calderón’s and 10.7% lower than under Vicente Fox, he said.
The salary difference between rich and poor has also dropped, he said. Mexico’s richest now earn 15 times more than the poorest, down from a high of 35.6 times more in 2010. In 2004, they earned 23 times more, and in 2016, 21 times more, according to Inegi data.
Similar to the Trump-era’s “alternative facts,” political disagreement in Mexico has been tagged with a common refrain by López Obrador: “I have other data.”
Several media outlets reported earlier this month that rich households were receiving more social benefits from López Obrador’s administration than poor ones, claims that political analyst Viri Ríos has flatly called out as “incorrect.”
Her analysis of the same Inegi earnings and expenditures survey found that the vast majority of public benefits, over $30 billion pesos (US $1.76 billion), have gone to the sector of the population defined as “poor.” This includes households in the 10-40% range of earners.
Middle-range earners received the next largest slice of the public benefits pie, around 20 billion pesos ($1.175 billion). Those in the lowest 10% of earners, considered to be in “extreme poverty,” received around 15 billion pesos ($881.6 million) in the first four years of López Obrador’s term.
Other analysts say the López Obrador administration’s social programs don’t do enough to support the poorest of the poor in Mexico.
“Without a doubt, poverty has been reduced, but there is a vital component that has escaped other analyses, and that is data on extreme poverty,” said Leonardo Nuñez, head of applied research at the watchdog group Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI).
His group’s analysis of the data showed that 400,000 people have gone into extreme poverty under the current administration. And over half of those currently experiencing extreme poverty are not receiving any benefits from López Obrador’s social programs.
“In an effort to create universal programs, we’ve made ones that are giving more resources to the rich and have stopped focusing on those with the most needs,” Nuñez said.
MCCI contributes this to issues of both access to benefit payments and the policy behind the programs. Its research has shown that the “Wellbeing Census” conducted at the beginning of the administration was neither comprehensive nor objective.
“Each and every one of the households was not verified, rather, it was an exercise in which people who knew each other came and registered,” he said.
One thing analysts have agreed on is that while it is not true that the rich are receiving the majority of López Obrador’s social benefits, more public money is making its way to higher-earning households than in previous administrations.
In 2018, the lowest tenth of earners received 23% of public benefits, while the top 10% received 2%, Nuñez said. Those slices of the pie are now at 9% and 8%, respectively.
“So, clearly the well-to-do are receiving more than before, and the poorest are receiving less,” he said.
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