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| Photo: Roberto García Ortiz |
La Jornada: Susana González G.
More than 18 million children younger than 14 live in “multidimensional poverty”, without access to guaranteed rights such as social services, education, health services, or decent housing.
This number represents 56.3% of the 32.5 million children who live in the country who, in turn, represent 29% of the national population, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) said in relation to Children’s Day.
"If we consider the children in multidimensional poverty (56.3%), together with those vulnerable to social problems whose families have an income higher than the poverty line (19.7%), then three out of four of Mexico's children between 0 and 14 years old (76%) are experiencing at least one social problem:
83.5% of them don't have access to social security [health insurance]; 38.7% have no access to food; 38.5% don't have health services; 27.4% lack quality living spaces; 26.5% don't have access to basic housing services, and 10.6% are experiencing an educational gap”, said the institute concerning the two segments.The Institute assures that 1 million 72 thousand children don't live with either of their parents, 1 million 200 thousand work, and 55 thousand left the country between 2005 and 2010, which represents 5.3% of the migrants in that period. Moreover, 12.7% of deaths in the child population younger than 14 years old occur from transportation accidents, the main cause of death in this group, followed by leukemia and congenital birth defects.
In the group of 5-year-olds, ten of every one hundred are overweight. In babies from 12 to 23 months old there is a 38.3% prevalence of anemia. While the mortality rate in one-year-olds is 13.7 for each one thousand births, it has increased to 17 in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, mainly from perinatal illness, congenital birth defects, chromosome abnormalities and pneumonia. ... Spanish original