Mexico’s middle class: Too bourgeois to bus tables

Mexico’s middle class

Too bourgeois to bus tables

Jun 24th 2013, 14:33 by H.T 

 

 

 

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.

INEGI’s methodology is based mostly on spending patterns from its 2000 and 2010 household income and spending reports, and it looks at 17 variables from the number of computers, to education spending, to use of credit cards. A typical middle-class household, it says, would have four people; at least one computer; would spend 4,400 pesos ($330) every three months on eating out; someone would have a credit card; someone would work in the formal economy; the head of household would be married, with education at least up to the end of high school; few would have much bank credit.

Other studies, such as that by Luis de la Calle and Luis Rubio (“Poor No More, Developed Not Yet”) use other factors such as GDP per capita, longevity, health, average number of years of schooling, women’s participation in the labour force, consumption of meat, use of cinemas, and retail floor-space to portray the growth of the middle class. But the good thing about the INEGI report is that its measurements—if they become standardised—can continue from decade to decade to give a sense of progress.  After all, it is as important to be aware of Mexico’s growing middle class as it is the shocking poverty and lack of social mobility that still exist at the bottom end of the social scale. As the ongoing protests in Brazil indicate, the middle class cannot be taken for granted. It can be a source of political stability, but it can also suddenly turn very angry when its interests are ignored.