The National Council for the Social Development Policy Evaluation (CONEVAL) identifies and calibrates various social deprivation indicators to measure poverty in Mexico. Educational backwardness in 2020 affected 19.2 per cent of the population (24.4 million people). And 28.2 per cent of the population do not have access to health services and 52 per cent of the population (66 million people) receive social security benefits. According to CONEVAL, 22.5 per cent (28.6 million people) have insufficient access to food, 9.3 per cent (11.8 million people) have poor housing, and 17.9 per cent (22.7 million people) have limited services within the home. According to the National Income Survey of 2020, 8.5 per cent (10.8 million people) were in extreme poverty and 43.9 per cent of the total population was in poverty, which represents 55.7 million people. Although in 2008 the poverty rate was higher, 44.4 per cent of the population, the absolute number was lower, 49.5 million people. Only 23.5 per cent of the population were neither poor nor vulnerable (29.8 million people), which clearly shows the immense extent of the vulnerability under which most Mexicans live.

However, one should highlight that this methodology represents only one of many ways poverty can be measured and analysed: “Social vulnerability is the result of the impacts caused by the current development pattern, but it also expresses the incapacity of the weakest groups in society to confront, neutralize or obtain benefits from them” (Pizarro 2001: 25).

THE FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY

Since the 1990s, government strategy to tackle poverty was to identify the lowest-income groups in society and implement policies that would allow optimal public spending. The first programme as a strategy to fight poverty was the Education, Health and Food Program (PROGRESA), whose main objective was to improve the nutrition and diet of the poorest in the country (Cárdenas 2015: 803). The government based the initiative on health and education actions to ensure the delivery of a food basket, directed especially for women and children in extreme poverty conditions in rural areas. With the initial coverage of 300,000 families, the programme expanded to reach up to 2.4 million families (Levy & Rodríguez 2005).