1. The ranks of the middle class — defined as $7,200 to $50,000 a year — have risen to about ten million families.
2. That is almost 40 percent of all Mexican households.
3. The country is in the middle of a housing boom. 560,000 new homes were built last year — a record — and 750,000 are expected for 2006.
4. Annual inflation is down to about three percent and over the last two years interest rates on 20-year mortgages have fallen from 18 to 8 percent.
5. Sales of home appliances have tripled in the last ten years.
Those facts are from Business Week, 13 March edition. Each time I visit Mexico, the more I am convinced that country has turned the corner. Here is an earlier post on undervalued nations. See here also.
Re-reading the undervalued nations thread, it’s pretty clear now that Iraq wasn’t undervalued.
- Josh
To what extent could we attribute this to free trade?
[If in dollars, why define middle class that way? There is huge spread, going from 7k to 50k a year (esp. in a country like Mexico!)]
Middle class status in other countries is not defined relative to the US.
Perhaps an increasing middle class will push
for a reform that decreases political and
government corruption. Then Mexico and America
can be true economic partners in which both
citizens prosper mutually. Or am I dreaming?
$7,200 to $50,000, eh? That is quite a spread. Anyone care to wager
which end of that most of these 10 million families are clustered? And
remember Mexicans have bigger families than Americans. I suspect the mean
family from Tyler’s survey earns $14,000 for a family of six. That’s not
“middle class” in any sense Americans would recognize. You can call it
middle class if you want, but it’s still $2,333 per person per year.
Come on, Tyler. You’re usually reliably realistic!
Poor roads, poor infrastucture, no socials services. It is a shame that a nation with so many hard working people and so much in natural resources should suffer this way due to an inept kleptocracy.
Comments on this entry are closed.