Laura Elizabeth Pohl/Bread for the World
Marvin Jesus and his family, in a small
town near Comitan, Mexico. Mexico has a
fairly young population, so creating new
jobs is an important part of making progress on development.
community in Los Angeles. But there could be
many more—and U.S. development assistance
could help design and support them.
One way for U.S. development agencies to help
is by providing ingredients that evaluations of
some of these job-creation efforts have identified
as most needed—particularly technical assistance.
Potentially, financial resources could be targeted to
expand successful programs. Just one possibility is
thinking more broadly about the use of the U.S.
assistance that goes to Latin American immigrant“sending” countries.
In 2009, for example, 96 percent of U.S. assistance to Mexico was spent on military and drug
enforcement assistance. Assistance that could be
directed toward job-creation projects totaled $11.2 million, or .01 percent of
total U.S. assistance. Yet because the cause of most unauthorized migration is
poverty and lack of jobs in Mexico’s rural areas, projects that create more opportunities in poor communities can help ease the pressures to migrate.
Further Thoughts
Children and Hunger: A Reason to Migrate
Percentage of children under 5
who are stunted
Under-5 mortality rate
per 1,000 live births
Honduras: 29
Honduras: 26
Guatemala: 54.5
Guatemala: 35
El Salvador: 21
El Salvador: 17
Mexico: 15
Mexico: 17
Sources: FAO, Country Profile: Food Security Indicators, Mexico; World Bank, Nutrition
at a Glance fact sheets, Central America series. Data from 2008.
38 Essay 6
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