Well-being on the slide. Socio-economic development in two regions in the Mexican State of Puebla: Mixteca and Atlixco-Matamoros

Abstract

A significant portion of the global population faces the vicissitudes of the neoliberal economic model. The changes to which we refer in this work were initiated in the late 70’s, were implemented as economic policy in the 80’s and intensified since the global crisis of 2007-2008. Social impacts can be observerd within countries, by regions. The aspect that better reflects these impacts is social well-being, wrapped in a morass of economic and social crises: employment versus informal work, poverty and marginalization, wages constrained by limitations and decreased State protection; perhaps these aspects constitute the best indicative of the way social well-being is sliding down. In this paper we use the approach of a territorial perspective and chose two socieoeconomic regions in the Mexican State of Puebla that are characterized by high poverty levels: the Mixteca and Atlixco-Matamoros. The changes in these localities have served to analyze in more depth the effects of social and governmental attempts to re-establish some facets of well-being that have been lost.