Mexico registered a reduction in poverty and extreme poverty between 2014 and 2021, reported the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal). Social transfers meant a containment of this indicator in the elderly, but the proportion of children in this condition is 38 percent higher than among the general population.

During the pandemic, the only social group where income poverty was contained, even reduced, was precisely among the elderly and it was, to a large extent, thanks to the universal pension for older adultsexplained José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, executive secretary of ECLAC, when speaking of Mexico.

The report was published a week after a report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that during 2020, when the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic sank economic activity worldwide, Mexico had the second largest reduction of inequality, after Canada, in the income of its inhabitants and regions. (

As a preamble to talk about the Mexican case, Salazar-Xirinachs said yesterday that “one of the clearest lessons of the pandemic is the importance and value of monetary transfers conceived as rights (…) That made a big difference without a doubt” above all among informal workers who live on a daily income.

The extreme poverty rate in Mexico – people whose income is insufficient to ensure basic food needs – went from 9.4 to 9.2 percent between 2014 and 2021, while general poverty fell from 38.7 to 37.4 percent, according to ECLAC. Within these data, the gaps are maintained depending on gender, skin tone and age.

The organization’s executive secretary emphasized that in order to mitigate income poverty, social transfers They are not the whole solution, but they help a lot.which does not imply stopping channeling resources into productive investment and general care systems that help mitigate the inequality gaps in the country, particularly those of gender.

Although there was a decrease in poverty among the elderly, more than half of the children, 51 percent, are poor, above the 37.4 percent of the general population; In addition, in regional comparisons, Mexico ranks second in the proportion of poverty among its population of working age, from 20 to 59 years of age, only behind Honduras.

Given the increase in the price of the basic food basket from January to October, Salazar-Xirinachs considered that the loss of purchasing power of workers’ income has been contained by the increase in the minimum wage and the average remuneration of formal workers.