Transformation of Mexico in one generation

“Since the early 1990s average income in Mexico has increased by a third and educational attainment by more than half. Today a quarter for young people in their teens will end up going to college, three times a percentage of those who did in the early 1990s. The Mexican economy is now the 15th largest in the world and is projected to become the seventh or eighth largest by 2050. Mexico is gradually becoming a more middle class society as well, with around 40% of all Mexicans and a majority in most big cities part of the middle class. In many ways, Americans in the 1950s and 60s took a similar journey in the postwar economic boom. Life expectancy has expanded by four years over the past generation. It is now only two years less than that in the United States.

“Mexico has managed to transform itself over the past generation in surprising ways and this transformation is a big piece of the puzzle why Mexicans suddenly stopped migrating in large numbers a decade ago and haven’t started again since. Mexico may have a long way to go to become the country most Mexicans wanted to be, but few if any would have predicted the dramatic changes in a generation.”

From Andrew Selee, Vanishing Frontiers, 2018

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