page_title: Poverty in Mexico
section_title: Government involvements
hierarchical_section_title: Poverty in Mexico / Background / Government involvements
context_page_description: Poverty in Mexico deals with the incidence of relative poverty in Mexico and its measurement. It is measured based on social development laws in the country and under parameters such as nutrition, clean water, shelter, education, health care, social security, quality and availability of basic services in households, income and social cohesion. It is divided in two categories: Moderate poverty and Extreme poverty.
  While less than 2% of Mexico's population lives below the international poverty line set by the World Bank, as of 2013, Mexico's government estimates that 33% of Mexico's population lives in moderate poverty and 9% lives in extreme poverty, which leads to 42% of Mexico's total population living below the national poverty line. The extreme gap is explained by the government's adoption of the multidimensional poverty method as a way to measure poverty, which outlines that a person with an income above the "international poverty line" or "well being income line", set by the Mexican government, falls in the "moderate poverty" category if he or she has one or more deficiencies related to social rights such as education, nutrition, or living standards.
context_section_description: Social development began to take place in the form of written policy in the early 1900s.  The Mexican Constitution, approved in 1917, outlined the basic social protections citizens are entitled to, including the right to property, education, health care, and employment; and it establishes the federal government responsible for the execution and enforcement of these protections.
  The global economic crisis of the late 1920s and forward slowed down any possibility of social development in the country. Between the 1920s and the 1940s the illiteracy levels range between 61.5 and 58 percent, due this the government focused on establishing social protection institutions.  By the late 1950s, 59 percent of the population knew how to read and write. In the 2000s only 9.5 percent of the population older than 15 years was illiterated.  By the 1960s, individual involvement of some states to increase social development, along with the country's economic growth, as well as employment opportunities and greater income, and the migration of people from the rural states to the urban areas, helped reduced poverty nationwide.  The 1970s and 1980s saw the transformation of government and economic policies.  The government gave way to flexible foreign trade, deregulation and privatization of several sectors.  After the economic crisis of the 1990s, Mexico recovered to become an emerging economic power; however, the number of poor nationwide has remained constant even with the country's overall growth.
caption: Map of Mexican states indicating Human Development Index (2004)    0.80 and higher    0.750–0.799    0.70–0.749