Locating the Marginalized in Mexican Cities – Crp 386, Fall 2008
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#! "% " ! & )+%*((, " DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Latin America is characterized by high rates of marginalization and inequality, and the rapid urbanization throughout the region in the last half-century has exacerbated issues of substandard living conditions and security for the poor. In a rapidly changing urban environment, governments and development agencies working in the region need consistent methodologies for locating the most marginalized populations, as well as determining area’s most in need of structural interventions. Poverty alleviation policy can be much more effective when geographically targeted at those in most need. Mexico has an elaborate government branch working with demographic and geo-spatial data that has developed various systems and variable-indicators for measuring marginalization. This report borrows from such studies and uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create a model for ranking marginalization using a very small unit of analysis for the Metropolitan Area of Monterrey, located in Nuevo León, Mexico. The intention was to provide a scaled-down look at the presence of poverty in a Latin American city that is most often praised for its wealth and advancement in international business. Research was conducted principally by consulting studies from Mexican sources such as Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), Consejo Nacional de la Población (CONAPO), and Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). The ultimate motivation for this study is to provide a relatively simple, accessible GIS model for mapping marginalization in Mexican cities. It allows the researcher to locate the most marginalized areas of the population from an analysis of combined variable- indicators and then focus on one policy-related variable (i.e. access to running water) for a specific highly marginalized neighborhood or block. The model is not to be applied without an understanding of the context and the situation of the various marginalization- indicators for the specific region being studied. It can easily be modified and allows for the researcher to select different variables, if appropriate. 2 DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 INTRODUCTION Mapping Marginalization in Mexico Latin America has been recognized as one of the world’s regions with the highest levels of inequality in relation to the distribution of income, and although the region’s poverty levels may not be as extreme as some others, they remain consistently high. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has measured that the amount of households in the region living in poverty has hovered between 35 and 40% since the early 1970s (Montes Avilés 2003). The urban areas of Mexico maintain average poverty indices very similar to the overall region; in the year 2000, an average of 10% of Mexican households were measured as indigent while another 37.5% were considered to be poor (Montes Avilés 2003). As Latin America and the rest of the developing world continue to rapidly urbanize, the dynamics of poverty and security for the marginalized are changing, and governments as well as non-profit agencies are looking for effective programming to combat poverty and ensure safe and sanitary living conditions. In order to maximize the effectiveness of poverty reduction policy, agencies must ensure aid-resources are directed solely at the poor. One way of doing so is to target resources geographically, which requires detailed information on the location of the poor (Fujii 2008). In addition to mitigating aspects of poverty such as basic nutrition and education, comprehensive policy must specifically address the structural rehabilitation of settlements that are the result of rapid and unplanned generation of informal housing. There is no one way to measure poverty or marginalization; while some methodologies take into account purely economic factors, others give more weight to social indicators. The Consejo Nacional de la Población (CONAPO), Mexican federal agency for demographic and population studies, has developed various methodologies for measuring marginalization with inclusive variables that take into account access to education, living conditions, and income. The Monterrey Metropolitan Area The Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA) is Mexico’s third largest metropolitan area by population (after Mexico City and Guadalajara), and is located in the northeastern state of Nuevo Leon. The MMA is officially composed of nine municipalities: Apodaca, Escobedo, Garcia, Guadalupe, Juarez, Monterrey, San Nicolas de los Garza, San Pedro Garcia Garza, and Santa Catarina. The MMA was officially created in the year 1984, and initially included seven municipalities (Garcia and Juarez, located on the outskirts, are the two municipalities that were more recently added). Two additional adjacent municipalities, Santiago and Salinas Victoria, are beginning to be considered as part of the MMA as well. The core of the urban conurbation is the municipality of Monterrey, which also serves as the capital of state of Nuevo Leon. 3 DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 4 DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 The MMA, like other Mexican cities, has experienced an explosion in population since the mid-1900s. In the year 1950, the nine municipalities that today form the MMA had a total population of 339,282, and 87% of these inhabitants were concentrated in the municipality of Monterrey. In the year 2000, the total population of the MMA reached 3,243,466, composing 84.6% of the total state’s population. Population Growth MMA 1950-2000 Source: INEGI As the urban footprint has expanded, the municipality of Monterrey’s share of the population has decreased. The municipalities that have most recently increased in population are the outer areas of Apodaca, Escobedo, Juarez, and Garcia, all of which approximately doubled their population in the 1990s alone. This indicates a rapid urbanization that transforms municipalities from largely rural areas into the enveloping network of the MMA. Monterrey has traditionally been a stronghold for manufacturing and industry, likely a contributing factor to its rapid expansion from in-migration. In the year 1950, 46% of the MMA’s economically active population was employed in the manufacturing sector; in the year 2000 that number had decreased to 26.9%. This indicates a rise in other formal sectors, such as finance and business, but also a rise in the informal economic sector brought on by rapid urbanization. While Monterrey is generally considered the best place in all of Latin America to do business, and is home to the wealthiest municipality in the country (San Pedro Garcia Garza), this does not guarantee that the economic benefits are distributed uniformly across the MMA. The Encuesta de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares Área Metropolitana de Monterrey (Income and Spending Survey of MMA Households), conducted in 1995, indicated that the total combined income of the lowest- earning 80% of the population of the MMA was less than the combined earnings of the top 10%. When divided into deciles, the top decile earned 27 times the income of the bottom decile. However, Monterrey’s Gini Coefficient (an internationally-applied 5 DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 measurement of inequality in which a measurement of 0 indicates total equality while 1 indicates total inequality) is 0.4938, indicating slightly more equality than the country overall, with a Gini Coefficient of 0.5187 (Montes Avilés 2003). The nine municipalities of the MMA all maintain distinct administration of urban management issues such as transportation, public security, waste management and other services. Article 115 of the Mexican Federal Constitution states that each municipality is to be governed by a directly elected body, without any intermediary governing between the municipal level and the state level. There is even an explicit prohibition of a governing body composed of various municipalities (such as the County level of governance in the United States). Such administrative disjunction leads to inefficiency in all matters of urban management in the MMA. This includes policy approaches to alleviate poverty, from nutritional programs to housing and infrastructure access. 6 DANA STOVALL – LOCATING THE MARGINALIZED IN MEXICAN CITIES – CRP 386, FALL 2008 PROBLEM STATEMENT & RESEARCH QUESTIONS The government of Mexico and other similarly structured Latin American countries must use census and survey data to determine where the most marginalized members of its population are located, in order to best allocate funds and programming targeted at poverty alleviation. International development agencies and non-profits would also greatly benefit from a methodology of systematically locating the most marginalized areas within the ‘mega-city’ urban conurbations such as the MMA. The official Mexican agency for geographic and demographic data, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), along with the CONAPO, has various systems for ranking the levels of well being and marginalization for states and municipalities. The state of Nuevo Leon has consistently ranked high in well-being indices in comparison to the remainder of the country.