Human Development and Inequality in Mexico

Abstract

The Mexican neoliberal model and its policy of sustaining competitiveness in the low cost of labor, has caused an excessive concentration of income in the highest spheres of the Mexican population, in addition to growing poverty in our country; However, the shortcomings are not distributed equally, since inequality is expressed at the moment in territorial and social inequalities that in turn are a brake on economic growth in the long term. These inequalities can be corroborated by observing the very different levels of development achieved by the entities of our country measured through the Human Development Index. Although Mexico has traditionally been a nation of inequalities, until the mid-eighties of the last century these inequalities had been decreasing; However, the change in the economic model has caused an increase in these inequities. In this sense, the objective of this paper is to know how the concentration of wealth has caused enormous levels of inequality in Mexico. The methodology used is the comparison between the level of Human Development among the federative entities of our country and the evolution of the Gini index to understand how inequality has evolved and in which regions poverty has been concentrated. This reinforces the argument that the neoliberal model is the cause of the growth of poverty and inequality in Mexico.