Two out of every three persons in Chiapas lived under the poverty line in 2022, making it the federal entity with the largest share of poor population in Mexico. On average, about 36 percent of the Mexican population was living in poverty that year.

The working poverty rate in Mexico, which refers to the percentage of the population with labor income below the cost of the food basket, rose to **** percent in the fourth quarter of 2024. The share of the Mexican population at working poverty peaked in the third quarter of 2020, at ** percent.

Politics and the Migrant Poor in Mexico City is a comparative study of male migrants and their city-born neighbors living in six relatively small, predominately low-income communities on the periphery of Mexico City. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in these communities during 1970, 1971, and 1972, this study dealt with a relatively small group of people in a limited number of localities at a particular point in time. The research addressed several broad theoretical and empirical problems such as the most important incentives and disincentives for political involvement, the effect a large group of people entering the political arena has on the functioning of the political system, how the individual citizen -- and especially the disadvantaged citizen -- can manipulate the political system to satisfy their needs, the process by which individuals form images of politics and the political system, the process by which individuals assume a role of participation or non-participation in political activity, what occurs at the "grass roots" of a nation's political system, and how political activity at that level affects system outputs. This study attempted to place the low-income migrant in a social and political context, and focused on the nature and frequency of interactions between the research communities and external actors, especially political and government officials. Demographic variables include age, race, socio-economic status, marital status, dwelling unit type, and religious preference.

In 2020, in the Mexican city of Guadalajara around 36.5 percent of the population were not vulnerable, which means that around 63.5 percent were vulnerable to poverty or living under poverty conditions. About three percent of the inhabitants of the city were under extreme poverty conditions.

Dataset and Stata code for the paper "Influence of poverty concerns on demand for healthier foods: A field experiment in Mexico City"

Chiapas, the state with the highest share of population living in poverty, had the highest wealth inequality in the country based on the Gini coefficient as well. This index measures the deviation of the income distribution situation in a given country from a perfectly equal distribution. A value of 0 represents an ideal situation of equality, whereas 1 would be the highest possible degree of inequality. As of 2022, Mexico City, the country's capital, had a Gini coefficient of 0.46, second highest recorded figure.

This dataset contains all the information at the municipal level from the publication "Energy services' access deprivation in Mexico: A geographic, climatic and social perspective" published in Energy Policy (DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112822).

The information contains key categorizations on energy services access at the municipal level in Mexico, classified per climatic zone. It is complemented with key information on population and households at the municipal level.

The raw data sources used to produce this secondary data are listed below. A detailed methodological description is available in the primary article (DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112822) and the article "Dataset of household energy services access and socioeconomic variables in Mexico" to be published in Data in Brief.

Raw data:

2015 Intercensal Survey: https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/intercensal/2015/

Poverty Index by Municipality in Mexico 2015: https://www.coneval.org.mx/Medicion/Paginas/PobrezaInicio.aspx

Raster Map of Climates: https://www.inegi.org.mx/temas/climatologia/#Mapa

The dataset's geographic scope is as follows:

City/Town/Region: All municipalities

Country: Mexico

In Mexico, as of 2022, the bottom 50 percent, which represents the population whose income lied below the median, earned on average 2,076 euros at purchasing power parity (PPP) before income taxes. Meanwhile, the top ten percent had an average earning of 111,484 euros, 53 times over than the average earning of the bottom half. Further, the bottom 50 percent accounted for -0.3 percent of the overall national wealth in Mexico, that is, they have on average more debts than assets.

In 2023, from the total national wealth in Mexico, 70.2 percent belonged to the top ten percent group. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent had a total of 2.3 percent.

In 2022, about 40 percent of adults in Mexico held a net worth under 10,000 U.S. dollars. In contrast, merely 393,000 Mexicans (that is, 0.4 percent of the total) had a net worth of over one million U.S. dollars. Mexico is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America regarding wealth distribution, with 78.7 percent of the national wealth held by the richest ten percent of the population.

The minimum salaryThe minimum wage per day guaranteed by law in Mexico was decreed to increase by 22 percent between 2021 and 2022, reaching 172.87 Mexican pesos in 2022. In the Free Zone located near the northern border the minimum daily wage was raised to 260.34 Mexican pesos.This represented the fourth consecutive incrase since 2019, but could prove to be insufficient to maintain the wellbeing of Mexican workers after the soaring inflation rate registered in 2022 and the economic impact of the COVID-19 in Mexican households. The legal minimum salary has a long history in the North American country, it was first implemented with the approval of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States in 1917. Income inequality in Latin AmericaLatin America, as other developing regions in the world, generally records high rates of inequality, with a Gini coefficient ranging between 38 and 54 among the region’s countries. Moreover, many of the countries with the biggest inequality in income distribution worldwide are found in Latin America. According to the Human Development Report 2019, wealth redistribution by means of tax transfers improves Latin America's Gini coefficient to a lesser degree than it does in advanced economies. Wider access to education and health services, on the other hand, have been proven to have a greater direct effect in improving Gini coefficient measurements in the region.

The minimum wage per day guaranteed by law in Mexico was decreed to increase by approximately 12 percent between 2024 and 2025, reaching 278.8 Mexican pesos in 2025. The Northern Free Zone located near the northern border was the exception, where the minimum daily wage increased to 419.88 Mexican pesos. Education and income disparity The income distribution is entirely a new story than minimum wages, in fact, there are many factors that influence the level of salaries for Mexican workers. One of the main differences is by the number of schooling years, someone with more than 18 years of study earns on average double than employees with seven to nine years. Moreover, the area of study, while statistics and finance mean salaries, the highest wages by degree, are above 30,000 Mexican pesos per month, others such as performing arts and theology rank as the lowest paying degrees in Mexico.
Poverty still among the main problems
Despite one of the main reasons for minimum wage increases being moving people out from poverty conditions, poverty continues to be one of the main problems Mexican society faces. The number of people living under poverty conditions has decreased by 8.54 million inhabitants from 2014 to 2022, nonetheless, the figure is still higher than 46.5 million. The poverty rate varies among states, with Chiapas leading the ranking with 67.4 percent of the population under such conditions, while both Baja California and Baja California Sur recorded less than 14 percent.

In 2025, approximately 23 million people lived in the São Paulo metropolitan area, making it the biggest in Latin America and the Caribbean and the sixth most populated in the world. The homonymous state of São Paulo was also the most populous federal entity in the country. The second place for the region was Mexico City with 22.75 million inhabitants. Brazil's cities Brazil is home to two large metropolises, only counting the population within the city limits, São Paulo had approximately 11.45 million inhabitants, and Rio de Janeiro around 6.21 million inhabitants. It also contains a number of smaller, but well known cities such as Brasília, Salvador, Belo Horizonte and many others, which report between 2 and 3 million inhabitants each. As a result, the country's population is primarily urban, with nearly 88 percent of inhabitants living in cities. Mexico City Mexico City's metropolitan area ranks sevenths in the ranking of most populated cities in the world. Founded over the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan in 1521 after the Spanish conquest as the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the city still stands as one of the most important in Latin America. Nevertheless, the preeminent economic, political, and cultural position of Mexico City has not prevented the metropolis from suffering the problems affecting the rest of the country, namely, inequality and violence. Only in 2023, the city registered a crime incidence of 52,723 reported cases for every 100,000 inhabitants and around 24 percent of the population lived under the poverty line.