Inequality in Sickness and Health in Mexico, 1850–2000

This work will trace the evolution of infectious disease among the Mexico population from 1850 to 2000. To examine these trends we will use national health statistics from the health ministry, INEGI, the military medical services and the nutritional surveys. We will contrast the evolution of biological standards of living with the epidemiological transition of this period. It will ascertain if there were different trajectories across social classes and across regions. The hypothesis advanced in this study is that despite the federal government’s willingness to provide universal coverage of certain health services and public infrastructure such as vaccination and clean water, these services only had a limited scope and this created a gap in health standards of the population across regions (the North and Mexico City being in a privileged situation) and across social classes. The gap in health care provision does narrow over time but rather slowly given the rates of population growth and the changes in spatial distribution: the government could not keep up with the demand of health care services  of a population that underwent demographic explosion from 1920 to 1970. Epidemiological transition and the urbanization of population brought different challenges to health care towards the end of the twentieth century that were added to those the government had to deal with since 1850; in addition to fighting infectious diseases it had to fight degenerative diseases byproduct of changes in lifestyle and dietary habits. In the twentieth century, despite the government’s post revolutionary commitment to have a welfare state with socialized medicine the overall results in health care provision were limited due to the rapid change in the demographic profile. This study will also show that, in the case of Mexico, race was not a determinant of lack of health services.