« Politically tragic basketball games | Main | Why do libertarians love science fiction? »
Claims I dare not make at home
Mexico...is a dynamic, one trillion dollar economy and along with Canada, our largest trading partner. Its per capita income is $10,000, which puts it at the upper tier of middle income countries, not far behind Russia’s per capita income of $11,000. Compared with Russia, however, Mexico has a much better developed infrastructure of highways, ports, railroads, telecommunications, and social services that give it a poverty rate of 18% rather than 40%, as well as a male life expectancy of 73 years rather than 61 years (U.S. figures are 12% and 75 years, respectively). Unlike Russia, moreover, Mexico is a functioning democracy with open and competitive elections, a separation of powers, and a well-defined party system.
Here is much more, mostly on Mexican immigration, and thanks to Will Wilkinson for the pointer. I cannot, however, agree with all of the claims and rhetoric in the article. I would not, for instance, have denied that Mexico is "impoverished." Even this non-egalitarian feels compelled to point out that Mexico has one of the least equal income distributions in the world...
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 22, 2006 at 05:50 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Is this the beginning of a "Claims my Russian wife gets mad at" series?
Posted by: Cisco at Aug 22, 2006 8:29:17 AM
CIA fact book puts Mexico's poverty rate at 40% not 18%. Gini index 54.
Posted by: joan at Aug 22, 2006 9:04:04 AM
Regardless of the numbers, Mexicans voting with their feet tell us it's a poor country. But, it is getting better.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 22, 2006 9:07:33 AM
Mexicans voting with their feet tell us it's a poor country. But, it is getting better.
Or else their shoes are getting worse!
Posted by: Richard Bellamy at Aug 22, 2006 9:10:18 AM
"Regardless of the numbers, Mexicans voting with their feet tell us it's a poor country. "
No, it tells us that the US is a much better country to live in than Mexico.
Posted by: jult52 at Aug 22, 2006 9:20:36 AM
"Mexicans voting with their feet" tells us that a lot of Mexicans have enough money to pay coyotes to get them into the US. And I have heard that 95% of Mexican illegal immigrants had jobs back in Mexico.
Posted by: Robert Speirs at Aug 22, 2006 10:24:21 AM
And I have heard that 95% of Mexican illegal immigrants had jobs back in Mexico.
Why would that be surprising? They don't emigrate seasonally because they can't find jobs in Mexico, they emigrate seasonally because American jobs pay better.
Posted by: neil at Aug 22, 2006 10:59:24 AM
So, according to this post Russia has a higher per capita income($11,000) and a higher poverty rate (40%). Yet, you imply that Mexico has a more unequal distribution of wealth despite a lower per capita income ($10,000) and a much lower poverty rate (18%).
Am I missing something or do these two statistics strongly suggest there is more inequality in Russia than Mexico?
Posted by: Jake at Aug 22, 2006 11:31:25 AM
The article makes a convincing case that mexican immigration is not a big problem. But it does not address immigration from Central and South America which seems to be growing at a steady rate. Taken together with the steady rate of mexican immigration this is what is causing the concern about immigrants in this country.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Aug 22, 2006 12:51:05 PM
[Mexican] poverty rate of 18% [vs. U.S. rate of] 12%
Are these comparable numbers, really? How many poverty-level households in Mexico have a TV? How many in the US? Or a car, or a telephone?
Just curious.
Posted by: bob montgomery at Aug 22, 2006 12:56:07 PM
Mexico's better infrastructure is probably due to the fact it is much smaller than Russia.
Posted by: Andy at Aug 22, 2006 1:13:15 PM
Open borders believers need to grasp the fact that there are now 5,043,000,000 million people living in countries with lower per capita GDPs (purchasing power parity) than Mexico (according to the CIA World Factbook).
In the long run, the OTM (Other-than Mexican) immigration problem will dwarf the Mexican immigration problem.
Almost three billion people (2,965,000,000), or 45% of the world, live in countries with less than half of Mexico's $10,000 per capita GDP.
An extraordinary 85% of the world's children ages 0-14 live in countries poorer than Mexico (1,528,000,000 out of 1,789,000).
Compared to Mexico's 33 million children ages 0-14, countries poorer than Mexico have, in total, 47 times as many children.
India has ten times as many children, China eight times as many, and Pakistan three times as many. Indonesia has almost twice as many children, Nigeria 1.7 times as many, and Bangladesh and Brazil 1.7 times as many. Ethiopia, the Congo, and the Philippines have almost exactly the same number as Mexico.
It's likely that you have to be fairly close to as rich as Mexico to get a big flow of illegal immigrants going, as Brazil has begun recently. Of course, if the Senate's guest worker program passes, we'll start seeing a big influx from places like Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, followed by illegal immigrants coming to stay with their legal relatives.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Aug 22, 2006 5:02:14 PM
See, the thing about Mexico versus China or India or where, well, there's these things called oceans. Between us and Mexico there's no such things, so the same will not happen in terms of immigration. People will come, but not in the same way.
Posted by: agm at Aug 22, 2006 9:10:26 PM
"social services that give it a poverty rate of 18% rather than 40%, as well as a male life expectancy of 73 ... " (U.S. figures are 12% and 75 years, respectively)."
CIA fact book puts Mexico's poverty rate at 40%
CIA fact book puts US poverty rate at 12%
Social services that give Mexico a poverty rate of 18%
Social services that give US a poverty rate of ???? (I have seen estimates of around 2%)
Posted by: joan at Aug 23, 2006 8:05:33 AM
What is wrong with an unequal income distribution?
Is it not the perception that it is insurmountable that is problematic?
A little reading of behaviourial finance may allay this apparent bias...
Posted by: Rory at Aug 23, 2006 4:09:00 PM
