Will Mexico's Middle Class Follow Brazil's? Alex Erquicia - Blouin News
go to original June 27, 2013

A group of people protest against Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim, in Lima on May 3, 2013. (Reuters)

The global middle class continues to awake as a political force. In Latin America, Mexico is a likely candidate to challenge its ruling elite.

Mexico’s middle class hasn’t yet scaled to the extent of Brazil’s, but it is seen as more vulnerable to falling back down the social scale. A recent study published by Mexico’s statistics institute, INEGI, based on data from a survey on household income and spending, showed that the middle class in 2010 accounted for 39.2% of Mexico’s population, a 4 percentage points increase over the previous study done in 2000. Brazil’s middle class, by contrast, accounted for 52% of the country’s population in 2012, a 14 percentage points increase form 2002, according to numbers released by its government.

With 59.1% of Mexicans still belonging to the lower class by INEGI’s reckoning, falling back into poverty is a real risk for middle-class families. The majority of Mexican households today still suffer from some form of deprivation and remain highly vulnerable to shocks, says The Economist Intelligence Unit. They can claim to be the forgotten ones as the country’s economy expands and reforms are set in motion.

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