The social challenges of an aging Mexico

With an average age of 29, Mexicans seem quite young compared to the French – 42.7 years on average. But Mexico, the tenth most populous country in the world with 133 million inhabitants, is aging. And fast: since 1990, the average age has increased by ten years, and the proportion of people over 60 has tripled, reaching 14.3% of the population. By 2030, one in five Mexicans will be over sixty, and only a third will receive a contributory pension – the others having worked in the informal economy or being housewives.

The new seniors were born during the "Mexican Miracle," as the period of economic growth from the 1950s to the 1970s was known . "This generation certainly has problems, but they often enter old age with a home and a family," says demographer Veronica Montes de Oca, an aging specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "Their situation is less complicated than that of the next generation, which experienced the most radical changes in the neoliberal model of education, work, and health, and will enter a precarious old age."

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