Measuring Economic Development in Mexico

Economic development, generally speaking, can represent the improvement of the quality of life and human development corresponding with financial, educational, and health stability. With that in mind, we can look at the GDP to measure the average of factors that play into economic development, “reduction of poverty, improvements in and accessibility of education, health care, law enforcement, the improvement of civil rights and greater opportunity for civic involvement,” (Motto, Measuring economic development, 2017).

The problem with using GDP is that it isn’t that accurate to truly get an estimate on how a nation is doing. GDP also only focuses on economic stability instead social advancements. There needs to be more variables to be considered. A measurement like HDI, Human Development Index, created United Nations Development Programme. HDI has three variables to follow: health and well-being, education and literacy, and standard of living based on GDP. In other words, HDI would have more specifications than GDP has.

Choosing a country and analyzing both its GDP as well as its HDI, I wanted to study Mexico in consideration of its recent massive earthquakes. According to Global Finance recorded October 9th 2017, in Mexico, inflation is at 3.3% in 2017 which went up by .5% from 2016. Unemployment went down to 3.9% in 2017 from the 4.1% in 2016.

Mexico GDP per capita PPP: 16831.10 USD (Trading Economics, 2017)

Mexico Literacy Rate (15 years or older): 95.1% (Theodora, 2017)

Mexico Life Expectancy: 77.61 years (Geoba.se, 2017)

According to the World Bank, Mexico is listed as the 15th strongest economy worldwide. However, there is still unequal development where the wealth doesn't trickle down to the lower class or indigenous communities.

What these earthquakes unearthed according to Luis Gómez Romero from The Conversation is that as the economy for northern states in Mexico grew, the southern states which inhabitant lower class and indigenous aren’t given as many opportunities to thrive in education, career, or simple recovery for devastating natural disasters. Adam Gabbatt and Matthew Weaver from The Guardian reported that there were 273 casualties in the 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The aftermath of the earthquake showed that the livelihood of indigenous communities have not improved considering they were impacted the most.

With all this in mind, it is recommendable to consider looking at Mexico’s HDI. Even though Mexico is ranked 15th in most powerful economy, UNDP says Mexico’s human development index is ranked 77th compared to other countries from its 2016 Report. Mexico needs to confront its inequalities especially in southern states where indigenous people are considered in policy making and economic development. This can then be an improvement in poverty and life expectancy especially for indigenous communities.

-MASR

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