The population of Mexico varies within its society. Many are either very wealthy (investors and landowners) or very poor and very few can consider themselves middle class. Mexico "has a dynamic industrial base, vast mineral resources, and a wide-ranging service sector" (Britannica) and is one of the leading countries in Latin America. Mexican citizens have experienced a roller-coaster economy, where social declines followed economic booms. Those who suffer most from the declines are the middle and lower classes. To further economic stability and improve living conditions for its poo citizens, Mexico formed an alliance with the U.S. and Canada through the North American Free Trade Agreement.

According to the World Bank 2007 Table (which based its information in 2004), Mexico has a high degree of inequality (a 46.1 on the Gini Index). According to it, 39.4 percent of income or consumption is controlled by the highest 10 percent of the population and 55.1 percent is controlled by the highest 20 percent. This indicates that a small portion of the population controls a large proportion of the country's wealth while a large portion lives in extreme poverty. This is still true despite the positive effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement which has aided Mexican trade and economy, most especially by way of Canada and North America. Such agreements with foreign nations is a large part of Mexico's trade status; it has pacts with Europe, Asia, and other Latin American countries to gain diversity and expand its market further.

Mexico's labor force is comprised of agricultural, industrial and service occupations. Meanwhile, the employment rate is 3.2% which does not include the 25% rate of unemployment; those below the poverty line amount to 40% of the population. President Calderon has named the mass unemployment of Mexico one of his goals to remedy- he hopes to create jobs in order to reduce the rate. One of the problems caused by unemployment and poverty is human trafficking from Mexico into neighboring countries like the United States. Those who are willing to undergo the process of escaping into foreign nations are coerced into doing so by way of being offered false hopes for employment and beter living conditions that come with it.
(The following information from CountryStudy is based on information form the 1980's and 1990's)
The social structure of Mexico resembles that of American society in which there is a class structure based on wealth and income: an upper, upper-middle, middle, and lower classes. The upper classes are comprised of businessmen and goverment leaders or position holders and make up 10% of the population. Next is the middle segment that makes up 30% of the Mexico nation. This class "consists of professionals, mid-level government and private-sector employees, office workers, shopkeepers, and other non-manual workers" (Country Study). The last 60%, known as the lower class, is made up of the rest of the population who are "industrial workers, informal-sector employees and peasants" (Country Study).

        Three large social indicators of Mexicn status are: indoor plumbing and water, electricity, and dirt floors. Though all living conditions have improved all over Mexico, there is still large disparity between the poor and rich. The poor population may have access to fresh water, but that does not necessarily denote the presence of healthy, treated water.  Also, sccess to water does not indicate access to indor plumbing. Such areas are predominant in southern states such as Chiapas, Tabasco, and Tamaulipas.
Issues in electricity are similar. Though (more recently) most homes have electricity in urban areas, most southern states such as Chiapas are still behind in such commodities. Furthermore still, far more southern-state homes have dirt floors than nothern urban areas.

Mexico has two major ethnic groups: the Mestizos and the Indians. Both identify themselves as distinctly different from the group. The Mestizos were considered a mixed breed of European and ingenous ethnicities, but presently it a reference to any person who has embraced Mexican hispanic culture. Meanwhile, to be Indian means to be a person who uses a native indigenous language, is involved in community affairs, participates in religious services he or she was brought up in, and seeks sychronization between the social and natural worlds. To the Indians, if any single one of these aspects are missing or lacking, they have automatically become a Mestizo.
Both ethnic groups have highly negative views of each other:
Mestizo steretype: aggressive, impatient, and disrespectful to nature
Indian Stereotype: unmotivated, contrained by tradition, cannot deal with modern society.

These diferences between kinds of Mexican citizens are not immediately visible in one specific city or area. The differences are seen in the polar extremes of the far northern and far southern regions of the country. In the north there are nearly no native indigenous speakersand everyone speaks Spanish. As you begin to move downward in the states and regions, you encounter more natives with their specific, isolating tongues. In a far southern region such as Chiapas only 63% knew Spanish in addition to their native language.
"Census data reveals Indians remain the most marginalized secotr of Mexican society." More than 40% of citizens over the age of fifteen are illiterate and 30% never attended school between the ages of six and fourteen.
Furthermore, the Indians have higher morbidity and mortality rates due to disease, low nutrition levels, and little access to basic health needs.

Over the past forty years, Mexico has made many successful strides in improving levels of education. One aspect, however, has remained constant: primary and secondary levels students often do not finish school and what little school they have completed if poor and lacks profound quality. In 1992, laws were passed to try and remedy the poor situation Mexico had found itself in. One such law sought to extend the length of years of compulsory education from six to nine years. Though the aims of this passing of these laws were noble and aspired to aid education and further abovementioned rates, the law was unfortunately largely ignored at the country's own expense.

In addition to law issues leaving educational levels at a standstill, schools generally seem to remain poor in quality. Of all the schools in the nation, 20% have not offered all six primary grades. Many of the schools had very few teachers and the ones that had a sufficient amount had very poorly trained educators. Furthermore, Mexican families and their children had little access to schools and therefore lacked opportunity to receive an education. Thus, Mexican children are somewhat universally deficient in academic acheivement in key subjects.
In further improvment in this realm, difficulties arose and stifled improvment. "Fearing a potential loss of political influence, the powerful National Union of Education Workers strongly opposed efforts to decentralize curriculum and program management and retrain teachers... The government has earmarked few resources to evaluate school system performance. The result, according to education, is a system that stifles student creativity." The 1992 National Accord in the Modernization of Basic Education transferred the responsibility to improve educational conditions to the individual states. Finally, the accord provides the government the ability to renovate the curriculum to grant basic educational skills.
The above information, provided by Country Study, if reflective of education statistics as they stood in the 1990's. However, the above graph provides more recent statistics from after the millennium. According to those figures, learning conditions have improved since aforementioned circumtances. However, the same problems still remain. High levels of Mexican children drop out of school between the levels of primary and secondary school and levels of children in tertiary school levels continue to remain low. And so it is that literacy rates improve, but only gradually.

In the 1990's, researchers noticed Mexico was making great strides in improving health condtions among the nation. Among those improvements were the decreasing of mortality rates, increasing birth rates, and providing immunizations for newborns. However, those researchers soon realized that there were serious deficiencies in living conditions at the same time. While those significant rates were improving, disease statistics worsened due to "unsanitary living conditions, minimal access to health care, and an inadequate diet." These problems till affect the society today as a result of reductions in government healthcare expenditures by Mexican leaders in a time of "economic crisis in 1980."

The effects are shown in the graph above. Measles immunization remains the same for newborns and infants, which indicates that Mexico continues to be able to provide past health provisions. Meanwhile, HIV (and AIDS along with it automatically) begins to have an effect on the population. Just seven years ago, there was no record of HIV being a problem- hence no statistic is shown above for 2000. Checking the same age group five years later, a significant change took place and indicated that Mexico has been overlooking certain aspects of its heath care and faces serious problems in the future.



Further disparities in the country exist in regards to areas around Mexico. In testing the medical realm in various portions of the nation, it apeared that certain better developed regions were receiving better care:
 North and Northwestern areas scored 80/100
Southern and Central areas scored 40 or 50 /100
And the Southwest scored 39/100

"In 1995, legislature approved a plan to enhance the viability of social security by expanding its contributory base form the informal sector. In adition, Mexicans can establish privately operated individual retirement accounts. That element of the plan, to take effect in January 1997, was also designed to increase domestic savings to finance future economic growth."

This graph was created using the International Futures program. It shows the Gross Domestic Product per capita for the World (Green), Latin America (Blue), and Mexico (Red) from 2000 to 2100. The graph suggests that the Latin American GDP will exceed not only Mexico's but the rest of the world's as well by the year 2100.
From 2000 to 2050, the three regions grow steadily in respect to each other. Mexico begins at the forefront and remains the higher GDP gainer of the three with the world as a close second and Latin America lagging behind. However, once 2060 hits, Latin America has begun to catch up and has succeeded in pasing the world's GDP. From then, Latin American GDP shoots up greatly every ten years providing it with the highest grossing domestic product of the three regions indicatinga prediction of great economic growth in the overall Latin American region, which also includes Mexico.
These indicated improvements in the Mexican nation and its inclusive region make sense due to the great efforts the country's leaders are participating in to leave debt behind and enter national economic stability.

The above three graphs show the production by sector in Mexico. Though the numbers expressed in each graph are incorrect and do not represent the significant figures in terms of percentages, we can still deduce the growth and reduction of the various sectors in question. It is evident between the three graphs that each secotr has varied over the years. Studying the graphs, it is noticeable that the Service sector is the largest, has grown over the three time frames and is currently the most significant sector. While service will increase, Agriculture will decrease over the years into a fraction of what it will have been in 2000. Next, the Technology sector has increased from a sizeable portion to a more major size along with the Material sector. On the other hand, the Energy sector will decrease every twenty-five years and be a much smaller size than Agriculure will be in 2050. Last, the Manufacturing sector will vary little over the next fifty years.