Mexico

ENUT 2024 shows a heavy and unequal total work burden. Women averaged 39.7 weekly hours of unpaid domestic, care and volunteer work versus 18.2 for men, a 21.5-hour gap. The survey also measures paid work and commuting, so Mexico has strong time-use evidence but substantial care burden remains concentrated inside households.

Housing stock and construction capacity are large, but ordinary reach is uneven. INEGI reports 7.9% of the population lacked adequate housing quality/space in 2024 and 14.1% lacked basic housing services. The federal housing programme reported hundreds of thousands of lower-income homes under construction, which is capacity in progress rather than completed universal access.

Mexico has major agricultural, livestock, fisheries and food-system capacity, with 2025 production datasets covering crops and livestock nationwide. Yet INEGI found 14.4% of the population lacked access to nutritious, quality food in 2024, and 9.3% had income below the extreme-poverty food-basket line. Physical food capacity therefore coexists with a strong purchasing-power gate.

National water and sanitation infrastructure is extensive, but service quality and continuity are not uniform. INEGI reports 14.1% of the population lacked basic housing services in 2024; CONAGUA maintains national water, aquifer, drought, reservoir and quality systems, while official regional planning explicitly recognizes continuity and acceptable-quality gaps.

Electricity reach is close to universal and the national strategy targets connection for more than 500,000 remaining households. Government infrastructure data report a 2025 generation mix of about 75% fossil and 25% clean. Strong grid capability therefore coexists with remaining household exclusion, tariff dependence and a carbon-heavy generation mix.

Health access remains a major constraint. INEGI found 34.2% of the population lacked access to health services in 2024. OECD 2025 reports only 78% coverage for a core set of services, 2.7 practising doctors and 3.0 nurses per 1,000 people, one hospital bed per 1,000, and households directly financing more than one-third of health spending.

Basic-school reach is high but capability is not universal. SEP reported 2024-25 coverage of 99.5% in primary, 93.1% in secondary and 80.6% in upper-secondary education, while upper-secondary abandonment was 11.3% in 2023-24. INEGI separately found 18.6% of the population in educational lag in 2024.

Mexico has extensive road, air, rail, bus and urban-transit capacity, but national door-to-door reach and time burden are uneven. ENUT 2024 explicitly measures commuting time as part of work-related time, and official transport systems show substantial capacity; the live review did not find one current national metric that can stand in for affordability, reliability and travel time across all settlement types.

Family support is substantial but still highly conditional on income, programme eligibility and unpaid household labour. In 2024, 48.2% of the population lacked social-security access and 35.4% had income below the poverty line for food plus non-food needs. ENUT also records a 21.5-hour weekly gender gap in unpaid domestic and care work.

Mexico has enormous territorial and rural-production capacity, but territory is not the same as ordinary serviced land access. ENIGH 2024 tracks tenure and housing expenditure, while the latest detailed national tenure release shows a mix of owned, still-being-paid, rented and other tenure. Price, title, location and infrastructure remain substantial gates, so this category is scored conservatively.

Mexico has exceptional coastlines, forests, mountains, parks and cultural landscapes, but everyday peace of mind is heavily constrained by insecurity. In June 2026, 59.8% of adults in 91 surveyed urban areas considered their city unsafe. At the same time, CONANP reports roughly 98 million hectares in 232 federal protected areas.

Mexico retains very large ecological assets: CONANP reports 232 federal protected areas covering roughly 98 million hectares, including major marine areas. Resilience pressure remains real, including drought and water stress tracked through CONAGUA national monitoring. Protected acreage is therefore a strong base, not proof that ecological function is secure everywhere.

Justice and safety are major abundance constraints. ENVIPE 2026 estimates 23.0 million adult crime victims in 2025 and 33.8 million crimes; 93.4% were not reported or did not lead to an investigation file. This indicates substantial victimization plus severe institutional friction between harm and usable justice.

Mexico now has a current national waste diagnosis. SEMARNAT reports about 139,902 tonnes of municipal solid waste generated per day and identifies infrastructure, recovery, valuation, governance and financing gaps. The system has formal circular-economy and recovery programmes, but material return is far from closing the national waste loop.