Essay on Inequality in Mexico, Guide, Progetti e Ricerche di Scienza Politica

Scarica Essay on Inequality in Mexico e più Guide, Progetti e Ricerche in PDF di Scienza Politica solo su Docsity! CONTENT: Essay analyzing Inequality in Mexico, specifically in the field of Education, Health and Labor. Starts with a presentation of the overall context in the country and ends with an analysis of the consequences of this inequality. There is also a portion studying the process and the requirements to obtain citizenship in Mexico, and how this reflects the overall well-being of the country. Inequality in Mexico Introduction Mexico has been characterized and defined by many different sources as a very unequal country, under many points of view. For one Mexico’s income inequality is significantly higher than the Latin American average, which is the region with the highest degree of inequality in the world. Furthermore the Standardized World Income Inequality Database informs that Mexico is within the 25% of countries with the highest levels of inequality in the world. The problem with Mexico lies also in the high level of poverty, over 23 million people cannot afford a basic basket of goods, since poverty and inequality tend to implement and worsen each other, indeed this level of poverty coexists in the same country with some of the richest people in the world. Moreover, extreme inequality has also strong political implications, indeed the economic power of some is often reflected in the public sphere, with the implementation of certain policies that only benefit a few and that increase the inequality. Because inequality is at such high levels every single dimension of the Mexican country is impacted by it. We will now analyze some of the dimensions that make up for the Mexican society, like the education system, health services or the labor market and we will study how this inequality has affected this dimensions, for some dimensions it could be a slight effect, while others could be entirely build around this unfair and unbalanced system. I. Context Before starting to analyze Mexico, it is important to be aware of some specific characterizes of the country that will be relevant to keep in mind during the analysis. The first one, which is also likely to be the most important, is the problem of regional disparities. Mexico is a country in which inequality is not only among people, but it is also to be found among geographical regions, indeed the situation differs hugely from region to region. The problem is that while the overall picture may be positive, it is likely not reflecting the real condition of the country because there may be some single very positive values that drive the statistics up, for example the national statistics regarding wealth or income are not reliable because of the presence of some very rich individuals in the country. One clear example of regional disparities is the difference between rural and urban communities, indeed poverty is exponentially higher in rural areas and that is why in the last decades we have witnessed a constant flow of people from rural to urban areas. Previous studies have shown the relevance of understanding the dynamics of rural and urban inequality in Mexico, for example, Panuco-Laguette and Szekely (1996) showed that inequality between urban and rural areas accounted for 84% of total inequality in Mexico in 1992. This is also reflected in the level of poverty. Just like we can see from the picture the disparity in the levels of poverty is extreme, with certain regions with very high levels and others not so far away with opposite levels. Another factor that will be relevant in our analysis is the issue of wealth distribution that is closely connected with the issue of regional disparities and inequality in general. As already stated Mexico is characterized by the presence of both millionaires and very poor people, that share the same citizenship. An estimate provides, like we can see represented in the pie chart, that the wealthiest 1% of the population gets 28,4% of the nation’s total wealth, and top 10% of Mexico richest people concentrates 60% of the country’s wealth . However obtaining official and precise data on what happens in the higher classes is almost impossible, so most of the data that we analyze are estimates and not direct data, that need therefore to be analyzed with caution and also most of the data are obtained through other means, for example tax returns. The reason why the issue of wealth distribution is important is that it doesn’t affect solely the economic sphere, but it has political as well as social consequences population. Another problem specifically related to the Mexico is that a high percentage of the population is involved in the so-called informal sector, that is to say that they were not provided health coverage or did not earn any social security benefits, so what many organizations have been trying to do in recent years is to both give people incentives to move from the informal to the formal sector and to provide services and coverage for the people that have worked all their life in the informal sector. Another index that we can use to assess the quality of health in Mexico is life expectancy, indeed, despite the fact that in the last decade life expectancy rose and infant mortality rate has declined, there is still a big difference between the overall estimate for the nation and that of poor areas, for example in 2010 the overall life-expectancy of a Mexican was 74.2 years for men and 79.0 years for women, while, in the same year, that of the indigenous population was 72.5 years for men and 77.7 years for women, and the main causes of death for the indigenous population were influenza and pneumonia, so still contagious diseases. IV. Labor Labor in Mexico is negatively characterized by a limited number of economic opportunities, which makes it difficult for people to find jobs; to contribute to the problem another characteristic of the Mexican economy is that wealth is not homogeneously spread. First of all, wealth, which can be translated into power, is held only by a couple of individuals, causing the gap in income and wealth to grow even bigger, and therefore contributing substantially to the inequality of the country. Secondly, wealth is distributed heterogeneously also from a geographical point of view, indeed we can easily identify very poor regions clearly distinguished from other well-off ones. In the Mexican society we can identify major inequalities both in income distribution and in wealth distribution, for the former a 2008 report showed not only that Mexico ranked last in income equality among all OECD countries, while for the latter according to the Global Wealth Report of 2014 the wealthiest 10% of people in Mexico concentrate 64.4% of the country’s total wealth, making it a very unequal country under both points of view. Labor inequality can be identified not only in the simple inequality in the distribution of income, but also in the real work experiences of individuals, indeed Mexico is characterized by the frequent presence of economic exploitation. With economic exploitation we mean long working days with very low or non-existent wages, such treatments are reserved to minorities or groups of the population that suffer from constant discrimination, among these we can identify migrants, the indigenous population and the poorest communities. Migrants are a clear example because most of those who seek better opportunities in Mexico mostly end up being exploited in the agricultural field. Another kind of economic exploitation, that is not any less relevant, is that of women and children, that are trafficked in and out of the nation mainly for forced labor or for sex labor. This kind of human trafficking is handled and enforced by organized crime, that, as we will also see later, is an important cause of most of the negative characteristic of the Mexican country. Among the main causes of labor inequality is discrimination, despite article 1 of the constitution stating «All types of discrimination whether it be for ethnic origin, national origin, gender, age, different capacities, social condition, health condition, religion, opinions, sexual preferences, or civil state or any other which attacks human dignity and has as an objective to destroy the rights and liberties of the people are forbidden.» discrimination is still a very present issue, mainly because of the problem of regional disparities that causes even important laws, like this one that comes directly from the constitution, to not be applied equally throughout the national territory. Among the groups that suffer from discrimination some that are worth mentioning are the indigenous population, migrants and the LGBT community. As we have already seen these groups are disadvantaged because of a combination of issues that make their lives overall harder, like high poverty, less economic opportunities and exploitation, and we are just discovering now that they are also victims of discrimination. The indigenous population is a victim of discrimination because of the stereotype of poverty that they have been associated to over the years, the LGBT community on the other hand suffers from very different treatments across the nation, with them suffering very frequent and harsh discrimination in the most conservative regions of the country. The problem with migrants is a little more complicated, since the issue started to arise only recently. In 2016, after Donald Trump was elected as President, the United States started to threaten and in some way, start to introduce in practice, a closure of the border towards Mexico. This threat is very feared by Mexicans, since the connection with the USA is very important for them and for Mexico itself, so, because of this, they started to take out their fears on the migrants that they had incoming that were probably directed to the United States as well. The number of arrests of illegal immigrants rose significantly and at the same time the number of abuses, discriminations and attacks towards immigrants rose as well. Another important element that is very present in the Mexican society and that causes in many ways inequality, and labor inequality in particular is the presence of organized crime. The presence of this kind of criminality is well known in many regions of Mexico and this endangers equality in many ways, for example the threat of the use of violence limits individual freedom or for example some freedoms may be limited because gangs control whole regions of the country, making it difficult to find jobs or simply lacking freedom overall. Another way in which labor inequality is influenced by organized crime is through corruption, indeed is very common for relevant personalities to be corrupted, mainly in favor of criminal groups, therefore making more difficult the life of the normal individual, that will be from now on disadvantaged if compared to members of that criminal group. Another cause for current inequality is poorly designated tax system, indeed the tax system that is currently in use tends to maintain or increase the current inequality instead of reducing it, it places the tax burden mainly on low and middle income groups, making the already existing wealth and income gap even wider. One of the big problems resides in the fact that the tax policy favors those who have more, for example by taxing consumption over income, therefore poor people tend to pay more in taxes since they spend a higher percentage of their income, so the redistributive effect is almost non- existent. This can be easily verified simply by looking at some statistics: while the average OECD country obtains 32.5% of all of its income from taxes on goods and services, Mexico obtains 54% of its income this way, meaning that Mexico aims to tax mainly consumption, but knowing that taxes on consumption are regressive in nature, because relatively poor households tend to spend a higher percentage of their income than relatively wealthy households, this tax system does nothing but increase the already existing gap between the rich and the poor. Furthermore, the Mexican tax system doesn’t have inheritance taxes, doesn’t have vehicle taxes, the annual property taxes are almost nonexistent and up until recently there were no taxes on capital profit from the stock market in Mexico and those existing today are subject to numerous exemptions. All these characteristics of the tax system benefit only one small group of the population, making the problem of inequality way worse. And to conclude the worst problem for inequality in Mexico in general is the impossibility for the people to oppose or to seek change in any way. One reason because it is difficult to challenge the current order of things is the lack of official information and data, the government is indeed very much not transparent, it is therefore very difficult to fight something if you have no proof or no data. Another cause is the physical danger that you may put yourself through, you risk not only threats of the use of violence, but also the concrete use of it. There have been many cases of threats or blackmailing, but also people that have been hurt while protesting the system. Last but not least, the problem of corruption makes it very hard to improve the system, because you have a very difficult time in finding people you can trust. One concrete example is the drop in the memberships of Trade Unions in recent years, since a rumor spread out about corruption in the unions people stopped relying on them. VI. Consequences The presence of such high levels of inequality like we have found in Mexico has of course many consequences or “collateral effects”, we will analyze only some among the many consequences that impacted the Mexican Society. The most important phenomena that really characterizes the Mexican society and that was probably in part caused by this amount of inequality is that of emigration, indeed Mexico si the country with the most emigrants in the world. The main destination country is the United States, followed in second by Canada, but with a way lower percentage. The main reasons that push people to emigrate are of economic nature, mainly they hope to seek a better job or look for better opportunities. Emigrants are indeed mostly from lower class background and it also very common to find villages made up of solely women and children, because the husbands are working abroad and sending back money to the family.