Global Policy Forum

By Diego Cevallos

By adding cans to the products she scavenges and sells, Guadalupe raised her average monthly earnings from 70 to 85 dollars. But she feels as hard-pressed as before and finds no reason to celebrate.

The Mexican government, however, is congratulating itself on statistics that show that Guadalupe and thousands of other impoverished Mexicans no longer fall into the category of extreme poverty, which means the country is making progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). "I'm earning more by collecting cans instead of just paper like before. But nothing has changed," said Guadalupe, 32, one of the army of poor who scavenge for recyclable materials on the streets of Mexico City.

Because Guadalupe and thousands of other garbage pickers have seen their incomes rise slightly in recent years, Mexico has joined the ranks of the Latin American countries considered to be well on the way to living up to the goal of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015, based on 1990 levels. That is one of the conclusions of an Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) report, "Millennium Development Goals: a Latin American and Caribbean Perspective". Although the report was originally presented in Chile in June, it was not released until Monday in Mexico.

Halving extreme poverty is one of the eight MDGs adopted by the international community at the U.N. General Assembly - the Millennium Summit - in New York in 2000. According to ECLAC, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in Mexico dropped from 16.2 to 11.7 percent between 1992 and 2004, while the overall poverty level fell from 44.2 to 37 percent in the same period. But Guadalupe was not aware that she had escaped extreme poverty just because her income had risen 15 dollars a month.

"Son, I sure hope they don't find out we're no longer poor, because I wouldn't want them to come and steal all our money!" she joked to IPS when told about the report's findings. Guadalupe said she is just as poor as ever. Pointing to her small cart full of cans and paper, she added that if she wasn't, "I wouldn't be carting around all this garbage."

In Latin America, Chile has already met the goal of reducing the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day by half, while Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama and Uruguay are in a position to do so. ECLAC, which does not gauge extreme poverty simply by the one-dollar-a-day yardstick, but takes into account the statistics and methodology used by each government, found that these are the countries poised to meet the extreme poverty MDG. However, there is no guarantee of compliance, because of the danger of financial turmoil or economic or political crises, Rebeca Grynspan, ECLAC director for Central America and Mexico, told IPS.

In addition, the unjust distribution of wealth, which undermines progress towards poverty alleviation, persists in many countries, she added. Latin America is the region with the largest gap between the rich and poor. In the case of Mexico, ECLAC reached a conclusion similar to what the World Bank reported a year ago, when it said the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day had shrunk from 24.2 to 20.3 percent between 2000 and 2002. The statistics provided by the government of President Vicente Fox indicate that extreme poverty, which according to the local methodology includes people with incomes of 52 dollars a month in rural areas and 70 dollars in urban areas, dropped from 20.3 percent in 2002 to 17.3 percent in 2004. Based on these figures, Guadalupe left behind the ranks of the extreme poor when her earnings went up from 70 to 85 dollars a month, although her struggle for survival has not changed in the least as a result.

"These poverty figures from the government and ECLAC are very questionable and even deceptive, because one day someone is extremely poor and the next day they aren't," said Héctor de la Cueva, one of the spokespersons for the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which groups organisations opposed to neoliberal free-market economic policies. "To us, it is clear that the economic system that is predominant in Mexico and the region is a factory of poverty and inequality and that the social programmes that are so loudly touted do not represent a solution," he told IPS. José del Val, coordinator of the Mexico Multicultural Nation programme at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, noted that any poverty threshold that is set is only relative. "Poverty is a condition, a global social state that is not modified just because someone earns a few more dollars," he said.

The Fox administration attributes the reduction in extreme poverty to the country's economic stability, but especially to Opportunities, a social assistance programme that makes funds and nutritional and health aid available to 25 million poor people at a global cost of 9.5 million dollars a day. Grynspan says the programme is important, especially because it focuses on reaching children with education and health care - social spending that in her view breaks the intergenerational cycle of poverty in which thousands of families are trapped.

But, she added, this assistance is not sufficient. Without economic growth, stability, a solution to the unequal distribution of wealth, quality jobs, education, social assistance and other factors, poverty cannot be eradicated, she warned. Although several studies indicate that the number of people living in poverty, as measured strictly on the basis of income, has been shrinking in Mexico, others point out that this has had no effect on social inequalities. For 10 percent of the population of 104 million, per household income averages 4,261 dollars a month, while the poorest 10 percent earn 166 dollars a month, according to a study by the National Institute of Statistics published earlier this year.

The richest 10 percent of the population earns 25 times more than the poorest 10 percent - the same gap that existed 20 years ago.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C íŸ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.