Edith Pacheco

Rural Population Trends in Mexico: Demographic and Labor Changes

This chapter addresses the main transformations experienced by the rural population in recent decades in Mexico. It maintains that demographic trends are closely connected to labor and distributional changes in rural communities, particularly those derived from agricultural production transformations. The chapter reviews historical population changes in terms of classic demographic variables, but it also extensively examines changes in the occupational structures of rural settings and it pays particular attention to agrarian household strategies to cope with economic uncertainties. The chapter suggests that processes such as fertility, migration, and ageing in Mexican rural contexts need to be understood within the framework of land access, agricultural and labor-market transformations in recent decades.