Health and education praise the feat

As expected, President Claudia Sheinbaum celebrated the results of the first poverty measurement survey in Mexico, conducted by INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Census), during her morning press conference. Following the disappearance this year of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policies (Coneval), she considered the reduction of almost 14% of the population in this situation during the last six-year term headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador to be a "feat."

Of course, however you look at it, the reduction in moderate and extreme poverty is good news and an achievement of the first 4T government, as well as the increase in the percentage of the non-poor and non-vulnerable population, as we reviewed here yesterday.

It is also encouraging that the population with incomes below the poverty line has decreased from 43.5% to 35.4%, going from 56.1 million Mexicans to 46 million in that situation. Similarly, the income of the extreme poverty group fell from 12.1% to 9.3%, meaning that from 15.5 million Mexicans who were in this situation in 2022, last year it fell to 12.1 million.

Without a doubt, López Obrador's political decision to negotiate with business leaders a minimum wage increase program starting in the first year of his administration, achieving a cumulative increase of almost 200% during his six-year term, was key to the average monthly income of each Mexican rising again in the last third of his administration from 6,596 pesos to 7,468.6 pesos, even though social program transfers reached fewer people in the last two years. In 2022, 36.3% of the population living in poverty received one of these cash transfers, and in 2024, it fell to 29.6%, from 36.3 million Mexicans to 29.6 million.

As I mentioned yesterday, despite these record figures for the drop in poverty in Mexico, there are still many Mexicans unable to acquire the basic goods for living, and the first thing to consider is that the vulnerable population due to social deficiencies such as educational gaps, health, social security, food, precarious housing and lack of services, was an item that rose from 29.4 to 32.2%, which means, according to the INEGI survey, that from 37.9 million Mexicans without access to any of these goods in 2022, the number rose in 2024 to 41.9 million, and this was mainly due to the drastic reduction in access to health and education.

The President will therefore face the challenge of maintaining the downward trend in poverty levels left by her predecessor, but she will also have a clear path to correcting the health and education policies that were clearly flawed during her predecessor's administration and that, to some extent, overshadowed the successful salary policy of the first tier of the 4T administration.