Is Mexico Giving Away Free Money? Not Quite

Behind the myths about Mexico’s welfare system.

One of the most deep-seated beliefs among Mexico’s upper class is the idea that the government gives away far too much money through social programs. The assumption is simple, and damning: poor people receive so much that they no longer want to work.

Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico and one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, has even called for social programs to be eliminated so that, in his view, people will be forced to work more.

Echoing the magnate, Enrique Krauze, one of Mexico’s most prominent historians, has gone so far as to compare the country’s welfare programs to a plague. He draws a parallel —astonishing in its disdain— between Mexican social policy and the omnipresent brigades of Cuba’s dictatorship.

This narrative comforts the privileged and echoes in editorials, but the data tells a different story.