Azucena Vásquez/Reform Agency
Saturday, April 22, 2023 | 08:30
Mexico City.- In Mexico, practically 9 out of 10 inhabitants of rural areas live in poverty, while most of those who are not live in urban areas, which shows a deep inequality, warns a study by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal).
Mexico is a predominantly urban country with 77 percent of its population concentrated in this environment, but a greater proportion of the rural population faces poverty, points out in the document entitled “Rural poverty gaps in Mexico: magnitude, recent evolution and territorial distribution “.
While 68 percent of the urban population was poor and 37 percent lived in extreme poverty, close to 9 out of 10 in rural areas were poor and 62 percent, almost two-thirds, were in extreme poverty. describe.
“Mexico is a country of poor both in rural and urban areas and it is only a country of extreme poverty in rural areas,” he laments.
He points out that the urban-rural distribution of the non-poor is what makes the rural-city inequality most evident, since 9 out of 10 non-poor live in urban areas.
Likewise, it details that in five entities -Mexico State, Veracruz, Jalisco, Puebla and Mexico City- 39.1 percent of the country’s poor live; in seven of them, the five mentioned along with Chiapas and Guanajuato, live half of the total poor.
While in 12 federal entities (adding Michoacán, Oaxaca, Nuevo León, Guerrero and Tamaulipas) just over two thirds are located.
According to the ECLAC study, faced with this panorama, the policy of the fight against poverty cannot be localized when two thirds of the population lives in this condition, but must be universal.
Although this fight must be carried out both in urban and rural areas, in the short term it must focus on reducing the inequality of living conditions between the two environments, he adds in his study.
“This research shows the enormous severity of rural poverty, but also that urban poverty is predominant, which is also serious. (This) forces us to completely rethink the way of dealing with poverty in the country,” he says.
As part of its conclusions, the study notes that in the second decade of this century, Mexico continues to be a country in which the incidence of poverty comprises almost three quarters of the population, with a greater magnitude in rural areas.
