MEXICAN CHILDREN HAVE DEALT
WITH TROUBLES FOR CENTURIES

Any visitor who has spent any time checking off their “bucket list” beach visits to Mexico appreciates its amazing weather, charming towns, colorful scenery, astounding food, and friendly people. While this is true, tourists may also witness unpleasant sights of hungry little children being exploited, begging and selling all kinds of merchandise everywhere instead of a carefree childhood. Beyond the lure of Mexican resort towns, there exists a darker side involving sights of pregnant women at traffic lights holding a muddy-faced malnourished baby strapped to her back, grasping onto a cardboard cutout story about her family member needing a heart transplant or money for dialysis… And the list goes on.
 
Mexico is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world with children under 18 representing 43.5% of its population. Poverty sometimes forces migration of rural children to urban areas, often without families, or commonly from urban Mexican areas to the United States. Families become unstable, forcing many children to start bringing in money doing “whatever it takes”. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics’ counterpart in Mexico, the INEGI (National Institute of Statistics and Geography), some 3.7 million Mexicans between 5 and 17 years old work, which represents 13.1% of the total child population, up by over 1.7% than in 2019. What’s alarming is that 2 million of those 3.7 million children work in what are considered hazardous conditions.

The least well-off are on average three times more likely than individuals from the highest income categories to delay or neglect their children’s health issues. The gap between the wealthy and the poor has increased over the last decade. The number of the very poor is increasing and struggling even more to survive. Mexico, in fact, has a higher percentage of extreme poverty at 40% of the population, more than India at 25%, the Dominican Republic at 25%, Brazil at 22%, Algeria at 23%, or any other country with similar economic development.  Wages in Mexico exacerbate the plight of a child. While the U.S.’s minimum wage is $7.25 USD per hour as compared to Mexico’s minimum wage of the equivalent of $1.78 per hour, it is nearly impossible for a low-income family in Mexico to provide basic nutrition nor basic health-related necessities.
 
In addition to the financial demographics referenced, the prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) further complicates a child’s ability to cope. These experiences play an important role in the socio-demographic variables and in the increased incidents of physical and mental illnesses. Other risk behaviors include smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, a high number of sexual partners resulting in a high proportion of sexual transmitted disease (STD’s), sedentary lifestyle, crime, premature death, physical inactivity, and obesity which are the root-cause of many chronic conditions. 
 
It is predicted that about 6.6 million children in Mexico will suffer from obesity. If estimations are correct, Mexico will belong to the world’s top 10 countries with the most obese children by 2030 which leads to many other diseases including heart disease which was the most common cause of death in Mexico, Diabetes, and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). 

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For further information, we recommend referring to:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10567057/  
https://www.healthychildren.org/english/healthy-living/emotional-wellness/building-resilience/pages/aces-adverse-childhood-experiences.aspx