Family Reorganization and Public Policies in Mexico

Brígida García, El Colegio de México
Edith Pacheco, El Colegio de México

Our objective in this paper is to analyze the economic participation of adult Mexican women (18 to 64 years of age) over the past two decades, with an emphasis on married or cohabiting women in the larger urban areas (100 000 and more inhabitants), for whom the most important changes have been documented. We have chosen for our purposes two national employment surveys for 1991 and 2011. These information sources will enable us to delve more deeply into the labor force participation of some of the women with more family responsibilities, and explore the validity of different hypotheses regarding the factors associated with their labor market participation. In this last respect, individual socio demographic factors and those related with household structure and socio economic condition reserve special attention. One last section of the paper is dedicated to the discussion of public policies regarding work-family balance in Mexico.