The Mexico City significantly reduced poverty in the last six years, but faces a structural slope that does not appear in traditional measurements: the lack of free time.
According to him Integrated Poverty Measurement Method (MMIP)released at the beginning of November and used by the Evaluation Council of Mexico City, lThe lack of time continues to affect more than half of the populationeven above income poverty.
57% of people in the capital live with a shortage of time
The MMIP is the only instrument in the country that incorporates free time as a right associated with well-being.
According to the results corresponding to 2024, 57 percent of people in the capital live with a shortage of timea reduction compared to the 65 percent recorded in 2018, but still a high level that places this dimension as one of the most persistent.
In contrast, the Income poverty reached 36.5 percent in the same periodwhich shows that the availability of time is a more widespread factor than economic limitations.
Between 2018 and 2024, more than 850,000 people managed to overcome multidimensional poverty, with improvements in telecommunications, health, housing, energy and education.
While the extreme poverty fell below 10 percentwhich represents its lowest point in this period. However, lack of time remained one of the most difficult dimensions to reduce, even with the progress observed in the rest of the indicators.
The data show that the gap in Free time fell nine points between 2022 and 2024a period in which the lack of access to telecommunications and income poverty also decreased.
Even so, the proportion of people with time shortages continues to be higher than the rest of the shortages measured by the MMIP, which suggests that factors associated with mobility, working conditions and distribution of domestic work They continue to influence the daily well-being of homes.
The report highlights that this measurement allows us to observe dynamics that are not captured by the CONEVAL or INEGI methodologies, where poverty is defined based on income and access to social rights.
In the case of the capital, integrating time as a dimension of well-being reveals that daily overload It is one of the central components of urban poverty, even among sectors that have improved their income or material conditions.
In Mexico City, time scarcity remains a central component of daily life and a key indicator to evaluate mobility, employment, care and urban services policies.
