The Development of Housing in Mexico: A Welfare Regime Approach

Abstract

Housing represents a basic human need. Families can access housing through public policy, market mechanisms or by their own resources. This article adopts a welfare regime approach to analyse the housing sector in Mexico. The objective is to map the Mexican housing regime and to reveal its major outcomes. The study reveals the roles that public policy, markets and families have played for housing provision in the country's recent history. Findings show that whilst recent policy changes have enhanced the government's intervention in the housing sector, they have reproduced the unequal and fragmented nature of the country's social policy, and their design based on a market rationale has not resolved the housing needs for the majority of the population. The state and markets fail to provide adequate support for the majority of Mexican families, which continue to bear the heaviest responsibility for housing provision.