The evolving antipoverty agenda in Mexico: The political economy of PROGRESA and oportunidades
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International Food Policy Research Institute
Johns Hopkins University Press
Johns Hopkins University Press
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The high level of poverty in Mexico, concentrated mainly in rural areas but also present in urban localities, has been one of the main social problems characterizing periods of weak and strong economic growth. It has been only since the 1970s, however, that the government has targeted integrated development policies directly to the poor. Before that decade, postrevolutionary policies had been centered on creating the institutional, physical, and economic structure to promote general social welfare and economic development, including the redistribution of assets such as land. Since the 1970s, a series of antipoverty programs have been implemented, aimed specifically at improving the welfare of the poor. These programs have been based on different assessments of the nature and causes of poverty, as well as on various ideological precepts, and therefore differ in their particular objectives and design. Across the decades, the trend has been moving from programs directed at collective groups with lax targeting mechanisms to those directed to individuals with strict targeting and from programs focusing on wider subsidies and production incentives to those based on direct transfers conditioned on specific actions by the beneficiaries. These changes are significant. Although there are some similarities across programs, the changes reflect a national learning process across government administrations and political actors.
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poverty, poverty reduction