OUR report this week from the Mexican-American border points out that Mexicans are becoming too bourgeois to cross illegally into the United States. These days they’d rather stay in high school than risk deserts, rattlesnakes, murderous bandidos and La Migra (as the gringo migration authorities are known) just to bus tables north of the border. In fact, according to an exhaustive report in May by North American experts, known as the Regional Migration Study Group, Mexicans are much more likely to have a degree before going north than they were seven years ago, and the number of years of schooling of 15-19-year-olds is now pretty similar to that in United States. If more educated workers emigrate, it raises their earning capacity, which gives them and their families even more chance of rising up the ranks of the middle class when they and the money flow back to Mexico. In which case, even fewer will need to go to el Norte. That is real progress.
In Mexico, however, many are reluctant to admit that the country has become a middle-class nation. This is partly because so much of Mexico’s historical narrative is about poverty; half a century ago, 80% of Mexicans were poor. It is also because, for armchair socialists, the ways of defining the middle class includes access to things that are often considered abhorrently American, such as those sold through chains like Walmart. To them, it is almost as if those who cannot afford such trappings of middle-class life are somehow more authentically Mexican.
Like it or not, more and more reports are delving into the size and composition of the Mexican middle class. The latest is Mexico’s statistics institute, INEGI, which has recently produced what it says is its first provisional report (Spanish only) on the size of the middle class. Its analysis suggests that the middle class is not quite as large as some had thought. It encompasses 39.2% of the population (others have argued that at least half the population is middle class). The figure represents a four percentage-point increase from 2000 to 2010, which does not sound very much, though it may have been depressed by the impact of the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Only 1.7% of the population is considered upper class, while 59.1% are in the lower classes. That doesn’t necessarily mean they live in poverty, but they are more likely to sink into poverty when adversity strikes. Poverty still stalks the countryside. In cities, at least half the population is now middle class.
