Population

Mexico has been a country of deeply rooted pro-natality views. Generally, governments during this period did not perceive a conflict between individuals' reproductive behavior and the fulfillment of government responsibilities. On the contrary, this behavior was encouraged, since it was felt to further the goals of territorial integration, national survival, and industrialization.

Francisco Alba, 1993198

As the North Atlantic nations modernized, they underwent what is known as the demographic transition. Before the industrial revolution, as with the rest of the world, these nations had high birth rates almost matched by high death rates. With the introduction of improved medical care, higher standards of living, and public heath measures, such as clean water and vaccination, the death rate plummeted. This led to a sudden increase in population as birth rates remained high and death rates declined. In nations undergoing the demographic transition, the realization sank in that numerous children were no longer needed to guarantee the survival of some to support adults in old age. Also, pensions and social security made parents less reliant on children for support in old age. As populations urbanized, children ceased to be an economic asset. These factors eventually led to a sharp decrease in the birth rate. In some European nations, such as Spain, Italy, and Greece, the fertility rate eventually fell to between 1.1 and 1.3 children per woman—well below the rate needed to maintain a constant population.199

As the population of the North Atlantic nations was rapidly increasing, they were industrializing, so many found jobs in labor-intensive industries. Also, there were wide-open spaces in North and South America and elsewhere to which millions of Europeans emigrated.

Mexico plunged into its demographic transition more than a century after the North Atlantic nations. As late as 1940, both birth rates and death rates remained high compared to the levels found in the North Atlantic nations. After 1940, Mexico entered into the high-population-growth phase of the demographic transition. Immigration had scant impact on Mexico’s population between 1940 and 1970—the surge in population resulted from births far exceeding the number of deaths.

Defined as people living in a population centers of 2,500 or more Source INEGI (1994: 42) and Ordorica & Lezama (1993: 51, Table 8)

Between 1940 and 1944, the birth rate was 44.6 per thousand population. This rate remained virtually unchanged, averaging 44.3 per thousand between 1965 and 1969.200

Continuing a trend begun in the 1930s, between 1940 and 1970 the death rate plummeted from twenty-three per thousand population to eleven per thousand. During this period, the government built rural and urban health centers, provided drinking water systems and sewage treatment plants, and made more than a few applications of DDT to eradicate malaria. A higher standard of living, increased access to markets, and improved diets further reduced mortality. Mexico acquired the technology to prevent and treat infectious and parasitic diseases that had caused a large proportion of deaths, especially in children. The introduction of antibiotics reduced deaths from tuberculosis, pneumonia, tetanus, and typhoid. The proportion of deaths attributable to infectious and parasitic diseases declined from 42.6 percent of total deaths in 1930 to 23.1 percent in 1970.201

During the late 1960s, as a result of the imbalance between births and deaths, Mexico’s annual population growth rate reached 3.6 percent, one of the highest in the world. Within a thirty-five-year period—1940—1975—Mexico’s population tripled. The previous tripling, between 1820 and 1940, had required 120 years.202

The changes in economic and social welfare that occurred between 1940 and 1970 had a much greater impact on mortality than they did on the birth rate. Most families clung to attitudes concerning desirable family size formed when infant mortality rates were appallingly high and children could help on the farm. In 1966, a national survey found that only 17.7 percent of men and women felt that an ideal family would have fewer than four children. For 23.8 percent, more than six

Children was the ideal.203

Much to virtually everyone’s surprise, population increase began to affect almost every aspect of Mexican life. By 1970, 46 percent of Mexico’s population was below age fifteen. This required increased educational budgets—capital that might otherwise have resulted in new investments or in educating a smaller number of children longer, thus making them more productive. In 1958, President Lopez Mateos noted that 300,000 new jobs were needed annually to accommodate job seekers who were born in the 1940s. Eventually the number of new job seekers entering the labor force annually would exceed 1 million.204