Mexico's poorest receiving less government funds under president who brought poor to the fore

BY CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Updated 11:28 PM CDT, May 23, 2024

MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Andrés Manuel López Obrador swept into office nearly six years ago with a simple motto laying out his administration’s priorities: “For the good of all, first the poor.”

His administration scrapped a host of existing social programs and installed their own, quickly increasing overall social spending to unprecedented heights for senior citizens, unemployed youth, students, farmers and people with disabilities.

But less noticed was that the new roster of social programs dramatically shifted who was getting that money. Suddenly, Mexico’s poorest citizens were receiving a smaller portion of the spending and less money than under previous administrations.

Meanwhile, some of Mexico’s wealthiest started getting money they didn’t really need.

The shift owed largely to a massive “universal” pension benefit for seniors that López Obrador launched on a chilly January day outside Mexico City in 2019, just weeks after taking office. He announced he was more than doubling the existing federal pension — it has since doubled again — and expanding it regardless of income to people who previously didn’t qualify, like those who received another pension from their former employer.

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