•POVERTY: The share of Mexicans living in poverty soared in 2020, from 42 percent to 51 percent of the country’s population amid the coronavirus pandemic, estimates by EQUIDE research institute show. These are poverty levels not seen in Mexico in more than a decade.
•SURVEY: Based in a survey of 1,600 participants, EQUIDE calculated that the number of people living in poverty in Mexico saw an increase from 52 million in 2018 to around 66 million in December 2020. The team uses the same research parameters as CONEVAL, Mexico’s social development agency.
•IMPACT: “The impact of the crisis has been very serious affecting…the poorest in particular. It will undoubtedly have important effects on poverty by dragging people who were not in poverty into (one of the different) stages of poverty” said Graciela Teruel, the head researcher at EQUIDE.
•EXTREME: Housed at Universidad Iberoamericana, a Mexico City university, the research team also alerted that the pandemic crisis has already increased the number of people living in extreme poverty from 7 percent in 2018 to 13 percent in 2020 which amounts to a total of 20 million people.